Purpose in life as a resilience factor for brain health: diffusion MRI findings from the Midlife in the U.S. study.

Introduction: A greater sense of purpose in life is associated with several health benefits relevant for active aging, but the mechanisms remain unclear. We evaluated if purpose in life was associated with indices of brain health.

Methods: We examined data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Neuroscience Project.

Individual variation in white matter microstructure is related to better recovery from negative stimuli.

The uncinate fasciculus is a white matter tract that may facilitate emotion regulation by carrying connections from the prefrontal cortex to regions of the temporal lobe, including the amygdala. Depression and anxiety are associated with reduced uncinate fasciculus fractional anisotropy (FA)-a diffusion tensor imaging measure related to white matter integrity. In the current study, we tested whether FA in the uncinate fasciculus is associated with individual differences in emotional recovery measured with corrugator supercilii electromyography in response to negative, neutral, and positive images in 108 participants from the Midlife in the US (MIDUS; http://midus.

Higher resting-state BNST-CeA connectivity is associated with greater corrugator supercilii reactivity to negatively valenced images.

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA) are hypothesized to be the output nodes of the extended amygdala threat response, integrating multiple signals to coordinate the threat response via outputs to the hypothalamus and brainstem. The BNST and CeA are structurally and functionally connected, suggesting interactions between these regions may regulate how the response to provocation unfolds. However, the relationship between human BNST-CeA connectivity and the behavioral response to affective stimuli is little understood.

Behavioral and neural indices of affective coloring for neutral social stimuli.

Emotional processing often continues beyond the presentation of emotionally evocative stimuli, which can result in affective biasing or coloring of subsequently encountered events. Here, we describe neural correlates of affective coloring and examine how individual differences in affective style impact the magnitude of affective coloring. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging in 117 adults who passively viewed negative, neutral and positive pictures presented 2 s prior to neutral faces.

Mind-body interactions in the regulation of airway inflammation in asthma: A PET study of acute and chronic stress.

Background: Psychological stress has long been recognized as a contributing factor to asthma symptom expression and disease progression. Yet, the neural mechanisms that underlie this relationship have been largely unexplored in research addressing the pathophysiology and management of asthma. Studies that have examined the mechanisms of this relationship in the periphery suggest that it is the superimposition of acute stress on top of chronic stress that is of greatest concern for airway inflammation.