Our Research Questions

Development is a period of remarkable plasticity when experiences can sculpt our brains and behavior in ways that last a lifetime. This biological embedding of experience confers both great opportunities and vulnerabilities that we seek to understand here in PINE Lab. Our approach not only provides insight into healthy, resilient, divergent, and clinical etiologies but also facilitates interventions and supports that harness plasticity to improve lives. Three overarching questions drive our research:

1) How and when do environmental experiences shape neurodevelopment?

2) How do different neuroplasticity mechanisms biologically embed these experiences?

3) How does experience-driven neuroplasticity shape behavior?

We address these questions with longitudinal measurements of the environment, brain plasticity, and learning. to provide insight into fundamental principles of development from prenatal ages through young adulthood. We also complement our theoretically-motivated research with original computational methods and software to rigorously detect plasticity trajectories and contribute to capacity-building efforts expanding our community of neuroscientists and participants. We currently target our research questions within the following topics:

Sensitive periods in sensory and language neurodevelopment

Learning from environmental experiences is critical for healthy development. An especially important form of experience-driven learning occurs through sensitive periods, windows of heightened neuroplasticity when certain experiences shape brain and behavior with lasting consequences across the lifespan. That is, learning during sensitive periods has outsized effects on how we think and behave. Identifying and understanding windows of plasticity, including sensitive periods, is critical for both understanding and supporting developmental trajectories. We use experiences like music, language, simple black and white patterns, faces, and caregiving to probe sensitive periods in different visual, auditory, and language domains. We combine these measures of experience with multi-modal, state-of-the-art EEG and MRI/MRSpectroscopy features to uncover foundational principles of human neuroplasticity.

Impact of adverse experiences on neurodevelopment

Adverse developmental experiences can profoundly affect development, but knowledge of how adverse experiences become embedded biologically to have this impact in humans remains remarkably limited. We ask how and when different dimensions of adversity (e.g. degrees of threat and deprivation, stress, predictability/uncertainty of environment), pre- and post-natal exposures, stress, and micronutrient deficiencies interact with brain plasticity mechanisms to shape development. We seek to understand which changes induced by adverse experiences may confer risk for maladaptive function, reflect compensatory or protective or resiliency mechanisms, and/or confer adaptive advantages in certain conditions.

Impact of positive experiences on neurodevelopment

While much research focuses on early adversity, measurement tools to capture benevolent experiences remain limited. Consequently, very little research has examined how adverse and benevolent factors co-occur or interact to better characterize lived experiences and trajectories of resilience and risk. PINE Lab addresses this key gap by developing and testing a dimensional framework of benevolent socioemotional factors (predictability, opportunity for close connections, and trust/safety). We provide measurement tools to apply this framework, including our POS-DEV scale (Predictability, Opportunity, and Safety Dimensions of Environmental Variability). We also measure social support, caregiving, music exposure, and biological factors (e.g. gut microbiome, sleep) that promote healthy neurodevelopment. We assess how benevolent factors interact with early adversity factors to better understand individual differences in neuroplasticity and development.

Tools for inclusive, large-scale, developmental neuroscience

There are urgent needs for standardized approaches to EEG collection, processing, and analysis that support inclusive neuroscience, scale with intensive big data initiatives, perform well with constraints in lifespan and clinical populations, and are accessible across resource settings. For example, some hair types are not well-accommodated by EEG nets/caps. We test new EEG equipment and protocols for infants and children to achieve equity in participant inclusion and comfort. We also create and support open-source software called HAPPE. Our efforts are grounded in core principles of EEG reproducibility, accessibility, and inclusion. HAPPE dissemination and licensing have always followed FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) best-practice software principles. HAPPE is also innovative for its rich empirical benchmarks of data quality and psychometric tests to encourage robust research practices.