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

> **NIH NIH R01** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $58,312

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY (Parent R01)
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...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11045352
- **Project number:** 3R01MH129493-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Deanna Barch
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $58,312
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2022-03-07 → 2025-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11045352

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11045352, Characterizing pubertal and age mechanisms of neurodevelopment and association with rising internalizing symptoms (3R01MH129493-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11045352. Licensed CC0.

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