Introduction to the special issue on typical and atypical neural processing of emotional and social cues across the lifespan.

摘要

Over the past few decades, research describing how we use our brains to perceive, evaluate, remember, and evaluate emotional and social cues has burgeoned. Accumulating evidence in this literature supports the idea that as our brains develop, mature, and age, their responses to emotion and to social interactions evolve in a variety of ways. For example, recent findings suggest neural bases for increases in emotional stability and memory for positive experiences that appear to accompany aging (e.g., Kensinger & Schacter, 2008; Williams et al, 2006). A broad understanding of such developmental changes is difficult to acquire, in part because researchers often focus on particular age groups and publish their findings in specialized journals, with little reference to comparable (or inconsistent) findings in samples drawn from different developmental periods. This special issue, which grew out of a symposium presented at the Society for Psychophysiological Research in 2007, represents an effort to bridge the related, but distinct, literatures on neural correlates of socioemotional experience in youths, adults, and the elderly, and to stimulate crosstalk and collaboration among researchers who use a range of tools to study the neural basis of social and emotional functioning at different stages of the lifespan.