Relating Sensory, Cognitive, and Neural Factors to Older Persons’ Perceptions about Happiness: An Exploratory Study

Table 6

Resting-state functional connectivity of mesocorticolimbic regions in a reward network, among participants with and without “Happy task” responses in the accomplishment domain (n = 57).

Regions of interest	Function connectivity, mean		p^a
	+ Accomplishment	− Accomplishment
VTA – NAcc	0.63	0.48	0.01
VTA – dlPFC	−0.07	−0.03	0.61
NAcc – dlPFC	−0.15	−0.04	0.20

VTA, ventral tegmental area; NAcc, nucleus accumbens; dlPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. ^a values derived from regression models in which dependent variable is functional connectivity (FC). Adjusted models included the following independent variables: proportion of responses in accomplishment domain, age, gender, education level, depression score, comorbidity count, BTACT cognitive score, vision status (impaired/unimpaired), hearing status (impaired/unimpaired). The value indicates whether there was a significant association between FC and proportion of responses in the accomplishment domain.