# Neonatal predictors of contextualized emotion processing and risk for anxiety

> **NIH NIH F32** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $48,233

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Depression and anxiety are associated with overlapping dysfunctions in emotion processing, but the etiology is
not well understood. Individual differences during infancy in negative temperament—a global measure of a
child’s emotional reactivity and regulation tendencies—are associated with increased risk for depression and
anxiety. Thus, the emotional dysfunction linked to depression and anxiety appears to begin during early
infancy, yet the associated developmental neurobiology is poorly understood. A central barrier to unlocking the
developmental neurobiology of emotion dysfunction is we do not know how variation in brain function at birth
relates to emotion processing later in infancy, and whether this relation depends on infant temperament.
Contextualized emotion processing—processing emotions in the real-world, with competing stimuli and full
narrative context—is complex and includes: 1) detection of and attention towards salient stimuli; 2)
interpretation and contextualization of this information; and 3) making a behavioral response. Depression and
anxiety have been associated with dysfunctions at all three stages, and emerging evidence suggesting that
some of these dysfunctions are present at birth. Recent work has found that the variation in newborn brain
activation during saliency processing—the first stage of emotion processing—is associated with risk for
anxiety. While this links early variation in saliency processing to risk trajectories for anxiety and depression, the
developmental sequence is unknown. This study is therefore designed to identify how neonatal brain function
is associated with contextualized emotion processing during infancy. This project will add an additional
measure to the ongoing Neonatal Predictors of Anxiety Disorders Study (N-PAD; R01MH122389 PI: Sylvester,
sponsor), a longitudinal study of mothers and infants. This current grant will substantially increase the impact of
the parent grant by adding a video-watching eye-tracking task to the 24-month assessment, allowing us to
measure attention to contextualized emotional stimuli. Our central hypothesis is that neonatal activation to
salient stimuli (measured with fMRI) predicts attention to contextualized emotional stimuli during
infancy (measured with eye tracking), and this relation is strengthened in infants with negative
temperaments. Results will provide important insights to how internalizing symptoms emerge across early
development. Through this project, the candidate will develop critical expertise in infant neural and behavioral
assessments.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10772004
- **Project number:** 5F32MH132185-02
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Maria Catalina Camacho
- **Activity code:** F32 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $48,233
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-02-01 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10772004

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10772004, Neonatal predictors of contextualized emotion processing and risk for anxiety (5F32MH132185-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10772004. Licensed CC0.

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