This IRG considers applications on biobehavioral and behavioral processes across the lifespan. Research on non-human animals as well as humans is included, and both normal and disordered processes are addressed. While the focus is on behavior, studies may also consider related central, autonomic, neuroendocrine, immune, neural, hormonal, motor, and genetic issues. Neuroimaging and molecular and/or behavioral genetic approaches may be employed. Specific areas of interest include (but are not limited to): regulatory and homeostatic processes; social behavior communication, learning, cognition and behavioral control, behavioral development, basic mechanisms and consequences of substance abuse; animal models of psychopathology and treatment; basic psychosocial mechanisms of affect and stress, psychophysiological responses to stress, and genetic, social and environmental interactions with biologic processes. Also reviewed are all forms of language and communication, both normal and disordered, are considered as are the development and evaluation of preventive and therapeutic interventions for language and communication disorders. Normal and disordered forms of cognition and perception are considered including studies of the influences of affect, stress, and substance use and of physical, social and cultural contexts, provided that the emphasis remains on the nature of cognitive and perceptual processes. These include imagery, attention, memory, conceptual knowledge, learning, reasoning, and executive function. The IRG reviews applications concerned emotional, behavioral and cognitive disorders in adults, with emphasis on clinical disorders, and developmental, psychopathological, and substance use disorders studied in infants, children, and adolescents. This research includes disease/disorder etiology, diagnosis and nosology, course functional outcome, and co-morbidity. The IRG also considers normal and disordered motor function, including movement, sound production, development and interventions

This study section reviews applications investigating basic biobehavioral processes and adaptation across the lifespan (infancy through old age). The study section primarily considers research with non-human animals (vertebrates and invertebrates), but relevant work with humans is also included. Both normal and disordered processes are addressed. While the focus is on behavior, studies may also consider related neural, hormonal, and genetic factors. Methodologies include (but are not limited to) behavioral experiments, naturalistic observation, pharmacologic interventions, and computational modeling.

I. Regulatory and homeostatic processes. Feeding, drinking and other ingestive behaviors; sexual and reproductive behaviors; sleep and wakefulness; thermo-regulation; biological rhythms and cycles; activity levels; related perceptual, motivational, and action systems; behavioral and social influences on hormone action and gene expression.

II. Social behavior and communication. Social organization; attachment, affiliation, mate choice and parent-offspring interaction; dominance, aggression and peacemaking; socialization; play; organization and function of communication processes.

III. Learning, cognition, and behavioral control. Classical and operant conditioning; sensitization and habituation; choice; observational and social learning; sensory, perceptual, spatial, motor, and navigational abilities; timing, counting and other quantitative abilities; attention; memory; categorization; problem-solving; executive function.

IV. Behavioral development. Perceptual, motor, and cognitive development; social and communicative development; sexual and reproductive development; development of behavioral control; prenatal influences; behavioral teratology; behavior genetics.

V. Animal models of psychopathology and treatment. Processes underlying fear, depression, mania, violence, regulatory dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, behavioral (dis)inhibition; genetic, biological, and social influences on development of pathology; behavioral interventions; behavioral aspects of psychopharmacologic interventions.

VI. Mechanisms and consequences of substance abuse. Preferences and aversions; craving; tolerance and sensitization; discriminative and reinforcing effects of abused substances; subjective, sensory, perceptual, and performance effects; vulnerabilities to dependence; social influences; learning-theoretic and behavioral economic approaches.

This study section reviews applications focused on basic biobehavioral, psychological, social and cultural processes governing affect (emotion, mood) and stress in animals and humans. These studies may include application of basic science research, theories and techniques to the study of physical and mental disease processes. Studies also focus on central, autonomic, neuroendocrine, immune, genetic, experiential and lifespan developmental processes, appraisal and coping processes, as well as studies of attachment, well-being, hedonic processes, resilience and behavioral expression. Studies of stress include both laboratory-induced and naturally occurring stressors.

I. Basic psychosocial mechanisms of affect (emotion, mood) and stress. Subjective emotional states (e.g., fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, anger); emotional expression (e.g., facial, vocal, postural); regulation of emotion and mood; socioemotional development (including attachment, temperament and social influences); emotional consequences of life events and stressful conditions; resilience; cognitive influences (e.g., learning, reinforcement, imitation, appraisal) on emotion, stress, and coping.

II. Affect and stress processes in central and autonomic nervous system, neuroendocrine and immune function. Bi-directional relationships of affect and stress with neurobiological, neuroendocrine and immune substrates (e.g., HPA axis, neurotransmitter systems) in both animals and humans; effects of these processes on psychological function and adaptation. Imaging and lesioning methods are included, as well as psychophysiological measures of regional brain activation, cardiovascular reactivity, respiratory function, sleep, arousal, and startle. Developmental aspects, including examination of experience-dependent CNS plasticity, are included.

III. Individual differences and social influences. Influence of personality, affective and cognitive factors, temperament, genetic predispositions, developmental and family experiences, marital status, social relationships, sexual identity, gender, age, ethnicity and culture, and socioeconomic status on affect and stress and their linked CNS and ANS processes.

IV. Functional consequences of affect and stress. Effects of affect and stress on cognitive and motor function, pain and other symptom perception, participation in daily life activities, subjective well-being and quality of life, and social interaction. Coping processes and outcomes; caregiver burden and its effects.

V. Psychophysiological responses to stress. Biological (e.g., cardiovascular, respiratory, neuroendocrine, immune, central nervous system) responses to acute or chronic psychological stress and their moderation by individual, situational, or environmental factors (e.g., ethnicity, gender, personality, controllability, predictability) or physiological factors (e.g., physiological manipulations, genetic factors).

VII. Genetic, social, and environmental interactions with biologic processes. Cardiopulmonary, endocrine, immune, and neural sequelae of interactions between genetic and behavioral or psychosocial factors.

This study section reviews applications investigating language and other types of communication and their development across the lifespan (infancy through old age), primarily in humans. All forms of language and communication, both normal and disordered, are considered. Also included is research concerned with the development and evaluation of preventive and therapeutic interventions for language and communication disorders. Studies of non-human animals may be included when these are directly relevant to understanding human language and communication. Methodologies include (but are not limited to) psychological experiments, naturalistic observation, linguistic and logical analyses, computational modeling, neuroimaging, and psychophysiological measurement.

I. Language comprehension and production. Perception and production of spoken, written, gestural, and tactile language; phonetic and phonological analysis; morphological and lexical analysis; syntactic analysis; semantic and conceptual interpretation; inference; processing of communicative intentions and speech acts; discourse and conversation processing; sentence planning; speech errors; processing of idioms and figurative language; processing of dialect, register, and style; code switching; metalinguistic abilities.

II. Language development. Acquisition of grammatical and communicative competence; vocabulary growth; language change in adulthood; second-language acquisition and multilingualism; testing and assessment of language abilities.

III. Literacy. Perceptual and cognitive processes underlying reading and writing abilities; acquisition and development of reading and writing abilities; reading fluency and automaticity; text processing; reading and writing by deaf and hearing-impaired people; assessment of reading and writing abilities; instructional methods for reading and writing.

IV. Non-linguistic communication. Facial, manual, and bodily gestures; gestures accompanying language use; non-linguistic vocal communication; pictorial communication; multimedia communication.

V. Biological bases. Brain regions underlying language/communication abilities; language/communication abilities in non-human species; genetic bases of language/communication abilities; genetic and neurobiological foundations of normal reading and writing development.

VI. Disorders. Nature, origins, and course of language/communication disorders (e.g., aphasia, adult dyslexia, dementia-related impairments, phonological disorders, specific language impairment); assessment, prevention, and treatment of language/communication disorders. (Child dyslexia research is reviewed only in BBS-6; other research on child language/communication disorders can also be reviewed in BBS-6.)

VII. Social-cultural factors. Relations between language and thought; influences of social roles and norms on use of language and other forms of communication; linguistic/communicative styles; social-cultural influences on linguistic/communicative development; language use and development in multilingual environments; social-cultural aspects of assessment and interventions for language/communication disorders; social-cultural influences on literacy development; acquisition of reading and writing in multilingual environments.

This study section reviews applications investigating cognition and perception and their development across the entire lifespan (infancy through old age), primarily in humans. Both normal and disordered forms of cognition and perception are considered. Studies of non-human animals are appropriate when these are directly relevant to understanding processes in humans. Also included are studies of the influences of affect, stress, and substance use and of physical, social and cultural contexts, provided that the emphasis remains on the nature of cognitive and perceptual processes. Methodologies include (but are not limited to) psychological experiments, naturalistic observation, mathematical and computational modeling, neuroimaging, and psychophysiological measurement.

I. Perception. Perceptual mechanisms for all sensory modalities; object recognition; processing of spatial and temporal relations; scene recognition; eye-movement control; intermodal perception; perception of music and other complex auditory events.

II. Imagery and physical knowledge. Nature, acquisition, and use of knowledge about perceptual and physical properties of objects, scenes, and events; physical reasoning; processing of numerical and timing information.

III. Action and motor control. Planning and monitoring of actions; navigation; nature and acquisition of motor skills; perceptual-motor integration; human-technology interaction.

IV. Attention. Attentional control and allocation; capacity and resource limitations; automatization.

V. Memory. Encoding, consolidation, and retrieval processes; short-term, working, and long-term memory; declarative, semantic, episodic, procedural and other types of memory and their interactions; organization of information in memory.

VI. Conceptual knowledge. Nature and organization of conceptual, semantic, propositional, and schematic knowledge; categorization; understanding of causality; expert knowledge; folk/naive knowledge of biology, psychology, and other domains.

VII. Learning. Acquisition of knowledge and skills; implicit and explicit learning; rule induction; roles of instruction and practice; exploratory behavior.

VIII. Reasoning, decision-making, and problem-solving. Use of rules, models, strategies, and heuristics; deductive and inductive reasoning; mathematical and statistical reasoning; analogical reasoning; choice behavior.

IX. Executive function. Planning and monitoring of complex behaviors; coordination of cognitive operations; consciousness.

X. Principles and mechanisms of development. Genetic, learning, and dynamical approaches; age-related changes in knowledge, strategies, and processing speed; plasticity; effects of training and education.

XI. Intelligence and aptitudes. Individual differences in cognitive abilities; testing and assessment; cognitive style; creativity.

XII. Cognitive/perceptual mechanisms underlying behavioral and mental disorders (e.g., addiction, amnesia, autism, dementia, mental retardation, mood disorders, perceptual deficits, schizophrenia, substance abuse), including cognitive/perceptual vulnerabilities for disorder.

This study section reviews applications concerned with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive disorders in adults. Emphasis is on clinical aspects of disorders including: schizophrenia, mood disorders, suicide, anxiety and traumatic stress disorders, eating disorders, substance use disorders, personality disorders; Alzheimer’s Disease, traumatic brain injury, and sleep disorders. Samples may include clinic, community diagnosed, symptomatic and high-risk groups. Relevant research includes investigations of psychological and biological vulnerability factors, processes and markers; and studies of etiology, diagnosis, course, treatment, functional outcome and comorbidity with other physical conditions and disorders. Environmental, social and cultural factors may also be studied as they relate to individual differences in psychological and biological dysfunction.

I. Etiology. Psychological (e.g., cognitive, affective), biological (e.g., genetics, neural mechanisms), factors involved in etiology of disorders; shared and distinct etiologies in comorbid disorders; vulnerability and triggering factors in onset of disorders; identification of cognitive, affective and biological markers of risk for onset; the etiology of suicide; consequences of social relationships and environment on cognitive and affective disorders and in ameliorating specific dysfunction associated with disorder. Studies of environmental, social and cultural factors may be appropriate as related to individual factors.

II. Diagnosis and nosology: Classification of disorders using family, course, outcome, treatment response and biological validation methods; diagnostic, clinical and functional assessment instruments and techniques; description of symptom patterns, identification of behavioral dimensions and behavioral phenotypes; identification of more homogeneous disorder subgroups; familial spectrum of disorders; cultural syndromes and the professional and indigenous taxonomies of disorders.

III. Course and outcome: Course of disorders including vulnerability, triggering, and protective factors involved in disorder onset, progression, relapse, and recurrence, including social and biological indicators and outcomes; comorbidity in clinical course; functional impact of comorbidity; suicide, self-harm, and behavioral risk behaviors in persons with disorders; functional outcomes (e.g., work, independent living, and social functioning) in relation to etiological factors, diagnosis, illness markers, prior interventions, and environmental risks; longitudinal course and developmental transitions (e.g., aging, reproductive transitions in diagnosed samples); disorder in special populations (e.g., geriatric depression, postpartum depression).

IV. Cognitive and affective processes and markers: Processes of cognition, affect, attention, and memory in samples with disorders; these processes in relation to vulnerability for onset, relapse, or recurrence of disorder; behavioral and clinical studies of these processes in diagnostic groups, or in high-risk or spectrum-disordered individuals; impact of cognitive and affective variables on functional outcomes (e.g., work, independent living, and social functioning).

V. Neurobiology, genetics and other biobehavioral factors: Behavioral and clinical studies of biological, genetic, and behavioral processes and/or vulnerability, disability, and illness markers (e.g., psychophysiological or neurocognitive abnormalities, structural or functional brain patterns identified by neuroimaging, genetic factors); these processes and markers in relation to diagnosis, nosology, course, affect, and behavioral and functional outcomes.

VI. Behavioral and pharmacologic interventions: Development and pilot testing primary or adjunctive behavioral interventions designed to alter course of disorder; behavioral and social interventions in promoting rehabilitation of persons; interventions designed to prevent comorbid outcomes; development of culturally sensitive interventions. (Studies of interventions to control behavioral habits or disorders (e.g., smoking, dietary modification, sleep disorders in relation to general health outcomes) are reviewed in RPHB-2).

* A NIDA committee will review applications that focus on drug abuse populations if therapeutic process, treatment response, or other clinical issues are of central concern.

I. Risk in infancy and childhood. The short- and long-term development of infants and children with identified risk factors including early brain injury, prematurity, low birth weight, genetic risk, environmental risk and teratogens (including substance abuse). The role of familial and psychosocial stress on the behavior and development of compromised children.

II. Disorders of cognitive, sensory, perceptual and motor development. Included are disorders such as mental retardation, autism, phonological and language disorders, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, visual or auditory impairments and dyspraxia.

III. Child and adolescent psychopathology. Studies of diagnosis, etiology, comorbidity, clinical course and outcomes

IV. Neurobiologic, genetic, and other biobehavioral factors. Biological, genetic and neural factors underlying developmental disorders and child psychopathology. Included are genetic and family studies, neuropathological studies, neurochemical and neuroimaging studies, and studies of teratogenic exposures, when the emphasis is on the relationship between these factors and clinical and functional outcomes over time.

V. Congenital and acquired disorders that affect brain development and behavior. Studies of disorders that affect development because of CNS impairments, including congenital disorders such as spina bifida; known genetic disorders such as Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, Fragile X; acquired disorders such as Traumatic Brain Injury, CNS tumors, cerebral palsy, and focal lesions; effects of CNS treatment on development.

VI. Teratogens and substance abuse. Studies of prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, and other drugs; prenatal and postnatal effects of lead, mercury, and other toxins; environmental factors associated with neural tube defects.

VII. Treatment and rehabilitation. Studies that address psychosocial, behavioral, educational, and rehabilitative primary or adjunctive interventions for children with these disorders.

* A NIDA committee will review applications that focus on drug abuse populations if therapeutic process, treatment response, or other clinical issues are of central concern.

This study section reviews applications investigating normal and disordered motor function, including speech and voice production. Function across the lifespan (infancy through old age), in humans and other animals, is addressed. Also included is research concerned with the development and evaluation of preventive and therapeutic interventions for movement, speech, voice, and related disorders. While the focus is on behavior, studies may also consider associated anatomical, physiological, neural, hormonal, and genetic factors. Methodologies include (but are not limited to) behavioral experiments, physiological measurement, acoustic analysis, imaging, and computational modeling.

I. Movement. Control of limbs and extremities; body posture and balance; locomotion; head, jaw, mouth, laryngeal, eye, facial and related movements; sensory-motor integration; motor learning and motor skills; movement disorders (including dyskinesia, dyspraxia, dystonia, paralysis, parkinsonism, repetitive stress injury, spasticity, tremor).

II. Sound production. Motor aspects of production of speech and other sounds via respiratory, laryngeal, and articulatory mechanisms; interactions of motor, acoustic and perceptual aspects of sound production; relations with breathing, chewing, swallowing, etc.; speech, voice, and related disorders (including dysarthria, dysfluency, dysphagia, dysphonia).

III. Development. Normal and abnormal development of movement and sound production; aging-related changes; interactions with other physical conditions.

IV. Interventions. Prevention and treatment of movement, speech, voice, and related disorders/disabilities; physical rehabilitation following disease or injury; prosthetic and adaptive technologies; exercise.