Wisconsin Center for Affective Science

The Emotion Center is focused on the social and psychobiological contributions to affective style.  Affective style refers to a broad range of individual differences in emotion-related processes.  Such individual differences are hypothesized to play a key role in governing vulnerability to psychopathology.

Affective Style: Social and Psychobiological Substrates

The distal and proximal influences on the development of internalizing disorders and behavioral inhibition are central features of our research, along with a focus on the underlying neural circuitry associated with these characteristics, with a particular emphasis on prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the HPA axis.

An important component of affective style is the time course of affective responding, particularly the recovery function following a negative event.  This we have described as affective chronometry and a number of proposed studies will further develop this concept and explore its neural substrates and behavioral correlates.  Common measures are included in every Center project to facilitate comparisons across studies.

Our Center consists of four projects that are supported by three cores. 

• In Project I (Davidson), we will examine the neural circuitry underlying individual differences in affective chronometry in both normal individuals and patients with affective disorders using a variety of techniques including quantitative brain electrical activity measures, positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging.
• In Project II (Kalin), we will characterize the detailed circuitry underlying fearful temperaments in rhesus monkeys using reversible inactivation techniques to examine the contribution of the amygdala to this behavior.  The roles of glutamate and GABA in the amygdala will be explored with intraamygdaloid infusions of agonists and antagonists.
• In Project III (Goldsmith), we will examine a battery of central and autonomic psychophysiological measures related to affective style in monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin children.  A second component of this project will involve more intensive study of a sample of MZ and DZ twins selected to be at-risk for internalizing disorders.
• Project IV (Essex) will continue to be carried out in conjunction with the Wisconsin Family and Work Project, a study that began in 1989 with 570 families.  This project will examine early individual and family context factors that predict behavioral, observational and physiological measures of temperament during the preschool years.  Relations between these early social factors and individual child characteristics and biological measures will also be examined.

These projects will be supported by the Administrative Core, a behavioral Assessment Core and a Biological Measures Core.  This Center will continue to significantly advance our understanding of the social, psychological and biological bases of individual differences in affective style and will yield important new information that will facilitate our understanding of emotion disorders.