Neurobehavioral Mechanisms Influencing the Association Between Generativity, the Desire to Promote Well-Being of Younger Generations, and Purpose in Life in Older Adults at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease

Caitlin S Walker, Linda Li, Giulia Baracchini, Jennifer Tremblay-Mercier, R Nathan Spreng, The PREVENT-AD Research Group, Elena Anthal, Melissa Appleby, Pierre Bellec, Fatiha Benbouhoud, Véronique Bohbot, Jason Brandt, John C S Breitner, Céline Brunelle, Mallar Chakravarty, Laksanun Cheewakriengkrai, Louis Collins, Doris Couture, Suzanne Craft, Mahsa Dadar, Leslie-Ann Daoust, Samir Das, Marina Dauar-Tedeschi, Doris Dea, Nicole Desrochers, Sylvie Dubuc, Guerda Duclair, Marianne Dufour, Mark Eisenberg, Rana El-Khoury, Pierre Etienne, Alan Evans, Anne-Marie Faubert, Fabiola Ferdinand, Vladimir Fonov, David Fontaine, Renaud Francoeur, Joanne Frenette, Guylaine Gagné, Serge Gauthier, Maiya R Geddes, Valérie Gervais, Renuka Giles, Julie Gonneaud, Renee Gordon, Claudia Greco, Rick Hoge, Louise Hudon, Yasser Ituria-Medina, Justin Kat, Christina Kazazian, Stephanie Kligman, Penelope Kostopoulos, Anne Labonté, Marie-Elyse Lafaille-Magnan, Tanya Lee, Jeannie-Marie Leoutsakos, Illana Leppert, Cécile Madjar, Laura Mahar, Jean-Robert Maltais, Axel Mathieu, Sulantha Mathotaarachchi, Ginette Mayran, Melissa McSweeney, Pierre-François Meyer, Diane Michaud, Justin Miron, John C Morris, Gerhard Multhaup, Lisa-Marie Münter, Vasavan Nair, Jamie Near, Holly Newbold-Fox, Nathalie Nilsson, Véronique Pagé, Tharick A Pascoal, Mirela Petkova, Cynthia Picard, Alexa Pichet Binette, Galina Pogossova, Judes Poirier, Natasha Rajah, Jordana Remz, Pierre Rioux, Pedro Rosa-Neto, Mark A Sager, Eunice Farah Saint-Fort, Mélissa Savard, Jean-Paul Soucy, Reisa A Sperling, Nathan Spreng, Frederic St-Onge, Christine Tardif, Louise Théroux, Ronald G Thomas, Paule-Joanne Toussaint, Jennifer Tremblay-Mercier, Miranda Tuwaig, Etienne Vachon-Presseau, Isabelle Vallée, Vinod Venugopalan, Sylvia Villeneuve, Simon Ducharme, Karen Wan, Seqian Wang and Maiya R Geddes

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 2024, vol. 79, issue 6, 412-427

Abstract: ObjectivesGenerativity, the desire and action to improve the well-being of younger generations, is associated with purpose in life among older adults. However, the neurobehavioral factors supporting the relationship between generativity and purpose in life remain unknown. This study aims to identify the functional neuroanatomy of generativity and mechanisms linking generativity with purpose in life in at-risk older adults.MethodsFifty-eight older adults (mean age = 70.8, SD = 5.03, 45 females) with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were recruited from the PREVENT-AD cohort. Participants underwent brain imaging and completed questionnaires assessing generativity, social support, and purpose in life. Mediation models examined whether social support mediated the association between generativity and purpose in life. Seed-to-voxel analyses investigated the association between generativity and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum (VS), and whether this rsFC moderated the relationship between generativity and purpose in life.ResultsAffectionate social support mediated the association between generative desire and purpose in life. Generative desire was associated with rsFC between VS and precuneus, and, vmPFC and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rdlPFC). The vmPFC–rdlPFC rsFC moderated the association between generative desire and purpose in life.DiscussionThese findings provide insight into how the brain supports complex social behavior and, separately, purpose in life in at-risk aging. Affectionate social support may be a putative target process to enhance purpose in life in older adults. This knowledge contributes to future developments of personalized interventions that promote healthy aging.

Keywords: Prosociality; Resting-state fMRI; Self-transcendence; Ventral striatum; Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbae060 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:geronb:v:79:y:2024:i:6:p:412-427.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Journals of Gerontology: Series B is currently edited by Psychological Sciences - S. Duke Han, PhD and Social Sciences - Jessica A Kelley, PhD, FGSA

More articles in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B from The Gerontological Society of America Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().