# Characterizing pubertal and age mechanisms of neurodevelopment and association with rising internalizing symptoms

> **NIH NIH R01** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $785,532

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Building comprehensive accounts of human brain development from childhood to early adulthood is crucial to
our understanding of both healthy neurodevelopment and the mechanisms underlying threats to youths’ mental
health. Brain development unfolds on multiple levels, but the field lacks a comprehensive understanding of
whether the trajectories of development are fundamentally similar or different across modalities (e.g., structure
and function), and how they reflect developmental mechanisms associated with puberty or age (or both). The
proposed research aims to generate a systematic and comprehensive multimodal account of typical
neurodevelopment from ages 5 to 21, with a particular focus on a) identifying age versus pubertal- and
hormonal-based mechanisms that undergird development in childhood and adolescence; b) systematic
analyses across brain structure, function, and connectivity using state-of-the-art acquisition and analysis
approaches; and c) evaluation of maturational variation in multimodal coupling across brain systems/
modalities as a function of development. Once established, this multimodal model of typical neurodevelopment
will be used to test a conceptual model proposing that early pubertal timing leads to intensification of
internalizing symptoms due to disruptions in brain development, including alterations in multimodal coupling.
Specifically, models of the impact of early pubertal timing predict either further enhanced coupling with early
puberty (neurodevelopmental acceleration) or disruptions in coupling due to neurodevelopmental delays. To
compare these competing models and advance our understanding of the neurodevelopmental pathways by
which early pubertal timing contributes to the rise of internalizing symptoms during adolescence, the research
will use both hypothesis-driven methods and novel validated analysis pipelines for data-driven exploration of
developmental changes in coupling, with careful attention to robustness and replication. The primary dataset
will be the Human Connectome Project in Development (HCPD), a large, NIH funded, multimodal brain
imaging dataset that includes a comprehensive assessment of brain structure, function, and connectivity paired
with pubertal and hormonal measures and extensive behavioral and clinical measures in both a cross-sectional
cohort of N=1300+ youth ages 5 to 21, and a longitudinal cohort (N=252) spanning ages 9 to 17 capturing the
pubertal transition. This sample is purposefully strong diversity in race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.
Key findings will be replicated to ensure robustness and generalizability in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive
Development (ABCD) longitudinal study. Our Specific Aims are to: A1) Establish a comprehensive, systematic
account of age-and pubertal-linked pathways of brain development across multiple modalities of brain structure
and function; A2) Test hypotheses about the relations of age and pubertal development to coupling ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10755710
- **Project number:** 5R01MH129493-03
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Deanna Barch
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $785,532
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-03-07 → 2025-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10755710

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10755710, Characterizing pubertal and age mechanisms of neurodevelopment and association with rising internalizing symptoms (5R01MH129493-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10755710. Licensed CC0.

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