Investigating connectivity-based mechanisms for age-related increased prejudice

Trustees Of Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Social cognition and aging research has shown that age-related decreases in controlled regulation predict increased prejudice with age. However, the mechanism underlying these changes remains poorly understood. People engage control to suppress affective responses to race. That regulatory decline predicts prejudice with age suggests dysfunction in the coordinated brain activity regulating affective responses. Assessing neural communication may be critical in developing strategies to improve the growing aging population's interactions with an increasingly diversified America. Communication changes between regions could occur via structural degradation subverting communication and functional degradation subverting the integration of distributed neural activity, thereby altering activity in specific brain regions during race perception. This proposal uses diffusion tensor imaging, resting state functional neuroimaging, and race-related neuroimaging tasks to identify a connectivity-based mechanism for increased prejudice in aging. Using affective and regulatory nodes of the neural prejudice network as well as other established brain systems, this proposal aims to validate 1) age differences in neural response to race, test if 2a) structural and 2b) functional connectivity contributions to prejudice act through age-related changes in neural response to race, and whether 3) structural and functional connectivity changes act dynamically to increase prejudice. Serving the first aim, we will validate prior work finding less regulatory-related neural responses to race in a lifespan sample and uniquely connect these changes to prejudice and prejudice-driven behavior. Serving the second aim, we will identify structural pathways in known brain systems whose degradation relates to prejudice with age. This is critical because pathway integrity corresponds with regulatory ability. Also serving the second aim, we will determine whether functional connectivity disruption within the same brain systems corresponds with prejudice in aging. Serving the third aim, we will assess how these changes may act in tandem to create a dynamic mechanism for increased prejudice with age by testing if the extent to which structural pathway degradation impacts prejudice predicates on functional signaling within the same pathway. In all cases and consistent with extant behavioral work, we will assess whether a connectivity-based prejudice mechanism hinges on relative regulatory ability. The proposed studies will enhance our understanding of a mechanism underlying age-related prejudice. Characterizing a mechanism for prejudice with age and identifying factors impacting it allows for the development of targeted strategies aimed at mitigating prejudice. Ultimately, these strategies could improve social interactions and quality of life for aging adults