will take place on Tuesday, January 12, 2016 from 17:15 to 18:15 hours in Lecture Hall H1, Turmgebäude.
Host: Prof. Hendrik Lehnert
Department of Internal Medicine I
University of Lübeck
Abstract
Although aging goes along with declines in cognitive and physical functioning, the majority of older people shows a high level of emotional well-being. This „paradox of aging“ has been attributed to the successful adaptation of emotion regulation strategies which might – at least in part – rely on age-related brain changes and preservation. In my talk I will present findings that indicate prefrontal brain functioning, cognitive selectivity and emotion regulation to be critical for successful emotional processing in aging. I will also provide an overview of current approaches to increase emotional resilience in late life.
CV
Dr. Brassen studied Psychology at the University of Mannheim and earned her PhD at the Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg. In 2013 she got her habilitation in Psychology at the University of Hamburg. Since 2011 she is head of the Independent Research Group “Lifespan Neuroscience” at the Department of Systems Neuroscience in Hamburg. She and her group have a major focus on behavioural and neurobiological mechanisms of age-related changes in emotion, motivation and cognition. By combining cognitive paradigms with a multimodal neuroscience approach she seeks to understand how the brain ages successfully and whether neurobehavioral resilience against typical age-related diseases can be improved. Since 2014 she is Principal Investigator of a subproject within the Transregio SFB-134 that investigates effects of age and weight on brain circuits underlying homeostasis and reward.
