University Of Wisconsin to launch center to study how emotions aff...( MADISON - University of Wisconsin-Mad...),Health

MADISON - University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists will study how the emotions affect health at a new center funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The university will receive $10.9 million to create a Center for the Study of Mind-Body Interaction. The center's goal is to gain a clearer understanding of how emotions are encoded in the brain and then influence other body systems that affect health, according to Richard J. Davidson, Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, who will serve as center director.

The center builds upon several existing UW initiatives, particularly the HealthEmotions Research Institute, one of the first and only academic institutions established to rigorously uncover the relationship between emotions and health.

The center also draws on ongoing interdisciplinary research programs at the Institute on Aging that are connecting psychosocial factors such as well-being and social relations to a host of neural, endocrine and immunologic measures.

And the new center intersects with the Wisconsin Center for Affective Science and a critical mass of researchers who have been investigating social, behavioral and biomedical linkages for years.

"The unique environment here, which fosters unusually close collaboration across academic departments and research institutes, has helped make Wisconsin one of the foremost resources for the study of emotion," says Chancellor David Ward. "The new center will allow these scientists to delve further than ever into the biological bases of human emotion."

The Mind-Body Center will focus on five projects. "We begin with the understanding that emotion is the primary means through which external psychological and social factors influence body systems and thus affect health," Davidson says. "We will examine this premise from five different perspectives."

-- One project will look at older women who have gone through a major life change to see what health-related correlations e
'"/>

Contact: Dian Land
dj.land@hosp.wisc.edu
608-263-9893
University of Wisconsin-Madison
27-Sep-1999