Dopaminergic and noradrenergic mechanisms of emotion-related memory over development

/Abstract Neuropsychiatric disorders often emerge during childhood and adolescence, and many involve maladaptive learning and memory. Persistent memories of salient positive or negative events can contribute to the onset and maintenance of disorders like addiction and anxiety; yet we lack a mechanistic account of how affective experiences drive selective memory prioritization throughout development. Dopaminergic and noradrenergic projections to the hippocampus have been implicated in long-term memory for emotion-related events and research in nonhuman animal models suggests that dopamine and norepinephrine systems may follow different developmental trajectories. Whether a developmental asymmetry is also present in humans and how it may impact emotion-related learning and memory processes that render youth vulnerable to neuropsychiatric disorders is unknown. The proposed research aims to establish a mechanistic account of how emotional experiences drive selective memory prioritization over human development. We will investigate neuromodulatory system function and its relations to emotional memory over development using behavioral, psychophysiological, neuroimaging, and computational approaches. Aim 1 examines how affect induced by outcomes in a classic probabilistic reinforcement learning task influences memory and neuromodulatory-linked function from childhood to adulthood. Aim 2 assesses how naturalistic affect during emotional video watching relates to memory and brain function. Aim 3 characterizes age-related change in catecholamine function longitudinally, using neuromelanin-sensitive MRI as proxy, and relations with everyday emotional memory. This research has the potential to: 1) establish affective contributions to memory selectivity and persistence in controlled experimental, naturalistic experiential, and everyday memory studies; 2) determine relations between multiple non-invasive proxy measures of noradrenergic and dopaminergic system function and emotion-related memory across development; 3) provide a multimodal, cross-sectional, and longitudinal characterization of neuromodulatory-linked function; 4) delineate neurocognitive phenotypes that may relate to risk for psychopathology and inform the development of early interventions. Project Number: 1R01MH141201-01 | Fiscal Year: 2026 | NIH Institute/Center: National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) | Principal Investigator: Alexandra Cohen | Institution: EMORY UNIVERSITY, ATLANTA, GA | Award Amount: $628,380 | Activity Code: R01 | Study Section: Human Complex Mental Function Study Section[HCMF] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11208873