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My research integrates perspectives from gerontology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience in order to understand how emotion impacts learning and decision making across adulthood.
Stressful experiences are common in our everyday life and research has revealed that acute stress can alter brain activation and behavior. Most of the human studies on this topic have investigated stress effects on memory in young adults. Acute stress can also impact brain regions involved in decision making and an emerging literature indicates that both age and sex modulate stress effects on cognition; however, little is known about the mechanisms driving these effects across the lifespan. Findings from my dissertation demonstrated that stress affects motivated learning and decision making in healthy younger and older adults, highlighting the important role that transient emotional states play in guiding our choices across adulthood. In particular, my dissertation work indicates that 1) experiences of acute stress during risky decision making may increase the likelihood of gender differences in decision making and also the allure of potential rewards via modulation of dopaminergic brain regions (e.g, the striatum), 2) that people are more likely to remember positive associations of past actions under stress, 3) that stress modulates motivation to receive positive feedback and activation of attentional control and visual regions during reinforcement-based learning, and 4) that older adults may experience enhanced reward learning under stress, but these stress effects may be more affected by individual and situational factors (e.g., feedback type, magnitude of stress response) in older than younger adults.
My postdoctoral research with Roberto Cabeza and Scott Huettel at Duke University will expand on these findings by examining how the quality of economic decisions in older adults may be affected by age-related changes to brain structure and function, decision difficulty, and emotion.
Lighthall NR, Gorlick MA, Schoeke A, Frank MJ, Mather M. (in press). Stress modulates reinforcement learning in younger and older adults. Psychology and Aging.
Mather M, Mazar N, Gorlick MA, Lighthall NR, Burgeno J, Schoeke A, Ariely D. (in press). Risk preferences and aging: The 'Certainty Effect' in older adults' decision making. Psychology and Aging.
Mather M, Lighthall NR. (2012). Risk and reward are processed differently in decisions made under stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21, 36-41. PDF
Lighthall NR, Sakaki M, Vasunilashorn F, Nga L, Somayajula S, Chen EY, Samii N, Mather M. (in press). Gender differences in reward-related decision processing under stress. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. PDF Read online
Mather, M, Lighthall, NR, Nga, L, & Gorlick, MA (2010). Sex differences in how stress affects brain activity during face viewing. NeuroReport, 21, 933-937. PDF
Lighthall, NR, Mather, M, & Gorlick, MA. (2009). Acute stress increases sex differences in risk seeking in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task. PLoS ONE, 4(7), e6002. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006002. PDF Read online
Mather, M, Gorlick, MA, & Lighthall, NR. (2009). To brake or accelerate when the light turns yellow? Stress reduces older adults' risk taking in a driving game. Psychological Science, 20, 174-176. PDF Driving game available here
Kryla-Lighthall, N, & Mather, M. (2009). The role of cognitive control in older adults' emotional well-being. In Berngtson, V., Gans, D., Putney, N., & Silverstein, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Theories of Aging, 2nd Edition, Springer Publishing, 323-344. PDF
O’Hara, R, Schroder, CM, Kraemer, HC, Kryla, N, Cao, C, Miller, E, Schatzberg, AF, Yesavage, JA, & Murphy, GM. (2005). Nocturnal sleep apnea/hypopnea is associated with lower memory performance in APOE e4 carriers. Neurology, 65, 642-644. PDF