Neurobiological underpinnings of cognitive emotion regulation in younger and older adults

Dysfunctions in the neurobiological mechanism of emotion regulation may be
characteristic of both younger and older adults with anxiety disorder, although
no direct comparative studies are available. Major problems with the few
existing comparative studies on emotion regulation in younger vs older healthy
persons are that they used extreme group comparisons of students vs older
adults, did not manipulate age-related differences in psychological processes
such as executive functioning, and did not examine age-related differences in
the up-regulation of positive emotions

Primary Objective: Using fMRI to assess differences in brain activation during:
(a) up- and down-regulation of emotional reaction to negative and positive
pictures vs neutral pictures; and (b) working memory at low and high load with
emotional versus neutral distracters in younger and older adults with or
without anxiety disorder. Behavioural performance between participants will be
assessed to see whether (a) older participants and participants with anxiety
disorder are less able to regulate their emotional reactions and (b) show
stronger working memory impairment at high load and in reaction to emotional
distractors compared with neutral distracters.
Secondary objective: Exploratory analyses will be done on functional and
structural connectivity using fMRI during rest and diffusion tensor imaging
(DTI) respectively.

A cross-sectional comparative design using four groups.

Participants will have to lie inside an MRI scanner, which may be of some
discomfort because of the loud scanner noise and being asked to move as little
as possible. In addition, emotional pictures are presented that may be
disturbing, although these pictures have been used as stimuli in more than 100
studies, including both healthy participants and patient groups.