PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The aim of the proposed research is to provide necessary training and research experience to facilitate the PI’s transition to an independent researcher in the field of life course research on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). The PI is a social demographer with specialization in life course health and neighborhood research. The proposed training will advance the PI’s understanding of the role of neighborhoods in shaping cognition over the life course and provide training in (1) spatial science, (2) biology of aging, (3) risk-resilience model, and (4) causal inference modeling that will add essential skills and knowledge to her existing toolkit. Early-life neighborhood adversity is a strong predictor of poor cognition, but prior research examining this link is mostly limited to studies of younger populations. Much less is known about the lifelong implications of early-life neighborhood contexts for cognitive outcomes in older adults. Early-life exposure to neighborhood adversity may be a source of stress eliciting biological and psychosocial processes that impact cognition. The proposed research is highly significant and innovative because it (1) advances understanding of the relationships between early-life neighborhoods and cognition in older adults, (2) investigates biological risk and psychosocial resilience pathways explaining this link, and (3) examines cumulative neighborhood effects on cognitive aging over the life course. The proposed research will leverage recent linkages between the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the 1940 Census. This data linkage provides a novel opportunity to develop new neighborhood-based measures of early-life adversity such as exposure to crime, water-borne lead and residential segregation by linking to other historical contextual datasets. These new measures will advance existing literature on early origins of ADRD which has primarily focused on individual-level socioeconomic status as key early-life risk factors. As part of data sharing plan, these measures will be available to the user community to allow analysis of early-life neighborhoods on later-life health outcomes. Taking advantage of residential histories available in the HRS, the proposed research will create cumulative exposure to neighborhood adversity covering respondents’ entire lifetime. The HRS also has all the other characteristics to study key concepts proposed in this proposal including physiological dysregulation, psychosocial resilience, and cognition/dementia. The PI will achieve these research objectives and training at the University of Southern California (USC). USC is an ideal location as there are ample intellectual and structural resources, training opportunities, and mentors for researchers in cognitive aging, neighborhoods and the life course, and psychophysiology. The new proficiencies will prepare the PI to write an R01 to examine gender and racial differences in the effect of ear...