Our Research Questions

Development is a period of remarkable plasticity when environmental experiences have a profound influence on our brains, minds, and behavior. This experience-driven development confers both great opportunity and vulnerability. Developmental plasticity enables us to learn from experiences and adapt to our environment in healthy ways. However, adverse experiences or altered plasticity may also lead to suboptimal outcomes and increased risks for neurodevelopmental disorders and psychopathology. Here in PINE Lab, we study how experience-driven changes construct brain function, cognition, and socioemotional behavior. Three overarching questions drive our research:

1) How and when do environmental experiences shape development?

2) How do different brain plasticity mechanisms biologically embed these experiences?

3) How does experience-driven neurodevelopment shape behavioral outcomes?

In addressing these questions, we aim to provide insight into fundamental principles of development and mechanistic accounts of developmental paths from prenatal ages through young adulthood. We focus primarily on the following research areas:

Sensitive periods in healthy socioemotional development

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, when experiences heavily impact emotional and cognitive development is critical for both understanding and effectively intervening in mental health trajectories. We use normative daily experiences like music, language, faces, and caregiving to probe sensitive periods in different socioemotional domains. We will soon also examine positive factors that promote healthy plasticity during these windows, including sleep and exercise factors.

Impact of adverse experiences on development

Development is a period of heightened vulnerability when adverse experiences can have lasting impacts. However, knowledge of how adverse experiences become embedded biologically to shape development in humans remains remarkably limited. We ask how different dimensions of adversity (e.g. degrees of threat and deprivation, stress, predictability/uncertainty of environment, number, duration, timing) shape brain, physiology, and behavior development. We are especially interested in how dimensions of adversity interact with sensitive periods in socioemotional and executive function development. We seek to understand which changes induced by adverse experiences may confer risk for maladaptive function or psychopathology, reflect compensatory or protective mechanisms, and/or confer adaptive advantages in certain conditions. In this context, we also aim to identify protective and positive factors in the environment or brain that promote resilience.

Impact of altered neuroplasticity on development

The typical course of experience-driven development may be altered not only when experience is disrupted, but also when experience occurs appropriately in the context of disrupted plasticity. Aberrant brain plasticity has been implicated in a range of disorders, suggesting disrupted experience-driven development is a core feature of psychopathology and neurodevelopmental disorders. We study how changes to neuroplasticity impact sensory and socioemotional function in the first years of life. By looking for early biomarkers before behavioral symptoms emerge, we hope to inform early identification and early intervention efforts to improve outcomes for those with neuroplasticity disruptions.

Prediction of developmental trajectories

Interactions between developmental plasticity and experiences are also the key to successful intervention and therapeutic care. However, across individuals with prior adversity or disrupted plasticity, outcomes vary widely from resilient behavior to psychopathology. The ability to accurately predict which individuals are on trajectories to negative outcomes would facilitate early interventions when there is time to redirect course using developmental plasticity. Therefore, we incorporate data-driven, machine-learning approaches that make individual predictions from measures of experience and developmental plasticity to identify at-risk trajectories. We build developmentally-sensitive models with datasets that let us inform when, what features, and which brain regions are most predictive of socioemotional and executive function. To do so, we are involved in large-scale, multi-site, multi-country studies that can identify generalizable algorithms.

Tools for large-scale developmental neuroimaging

We are excited to see developmental neuroscience as a field is moving towards larger datasets with increased resolution and recording densities. Electroencephalography (EEG) in particular has immense potential to scale. For example, EEG could one day be implemented in primary care settings as a screener for autism, or used in clinical trials of interventions as a more sensitive marker of neurodevelopment compared to standard markers of physical growth or infant mortality rates. Each of these applications would leverage developmental plasticity and intervention experiences to improve children’s wellbeing. However, few tools have been released to support these changes in data collection and potential applications for developmental EEG studies. To support these efforts, we develop open-source methods and software to achieve automated and standardized EEG data processing appropriate for developmental and clinical populations.