Research

Women's Health and Emotion Study

Currently, the SAVOR Project at Stanford University is conducting a study on women’s health and emotion.

The purpose of the Women’s Health and Emotion Study is to examine factors that are believed to confer risk for developing mood and anxiety disorders. Specifically, this study investigates how (1) a genetic predisposition in the serotonergic neurotransmitter system, (2) stressful life events during childhood and in the recent past, and 3) the interaction of genotype and stressful life events influence the processing of emotional information and the neural bases of emotion reactivity and regulation. This study hopes to clarify the roles of each of these factors in the onset and maintenance of mood and anxiety disorders as well as the physiological and neural mechanism by which these factors impart psychiatric vulnerability.

To achieve its objectives, SAVOR studies healthy young women with a range of biological profiles and psychosocial backgrounds. Participants provide a saliva sample for genotyping, fill out questionnaires assessing symptomatology and life stress, and complete computer-based cognitive tasks designed to assess biases in attention to, interpretation of and memory for emotional stimuli. Participants’ physiology is monitored during cognitive-emotional tasks, and some participants complete the tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or other biological tests.

Participants are followed longitudinally in order to assess incidence of psychiatric illness with a focus on mood and anxiety disorders