# Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Underlying Stress Vulnerability during Adolescence

> **NIH NIH R37** · HARVARD UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $1,630,563

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Exposure to stressful life events (SLEs) is involved in the etiology of most forms of psychopathology, and SLEs
occurring early in development are particularly strong predictors of mental health problems. Most adolescent
disorder onsets are temporally preceded by a major SLE. Yet, the mechanisms linking SLEs to the onset of
adolescent psychopathology remain poorly understood. Prior research on mechanisms linking SLEs with youth
mental disorders has focused largely on severe forms of adversity like abuse, neglect, and institutionalization.
It is unknown whether similar mechanisms are involved in the link between less severe SLEs and
psychopathology. Perhaps more critically, existing work has relied largely on cross-sectional between-subjects
designs that compare children with exposure to some type of SLE to children without that experience. There is
a dearth of longitudinal studies examining how SLEs influence emotion, cognition, behavior, and neural circuits
within-individuals over time in ways that predict the emergence of psychopathology. The proposed research
addresses this gap, using a novel methodological approach that permits examination of dynamic changes in
emotion, cognition, social behavior, and neural function and connectivity following SLEs at a sufficiently fine
grained level of temporal specificity to identify mechanisms underlying the link between SLEs and adolescent
psychopathology as they unfold in real time. Specifically, the project will examine how monthly fluctuations in
exposure to SLEs within-individuals predict subsequent changes in emotional processing in the Negative and
Positive Valence Systems, Cognitive Control, Social Processes, and neural function and connectivity over a
12-month period. In addition to monthly assessments of SLEs, psychopathology, and potential mechanisms,
passive monitoring of activity, sleep, and social behavior (e.g., interaction with peers through text and social
media) through smartphones and wearable devices will allow additional mechanisms to be assessed passively
and without subject burden. The study will investigate whether monthly variation in these emotional, cognitive,
social, and neural processes predicts later increases in internalizing and externalizing problems in an
accelerated cohort design with monthly assessments spanning age 11-18 years, producing 1,680 monthly
observations over the study period. The longitudinal design and high-frequency assessments are innovative
in allowing the identification of mechanisms that are altered by SLEs and prospectively predict
psychopathology with high temporal specificity during a developmental period associated with increases in
SLE exposure, stress vulnerability, and risk for psychopathology. Study findings will provide critical information
regarding the specific domains of emotion, cognition, social behavior, and neural function that are altered by
exposure to SLEs and increase vulnerability to psychopathology. These mechanism...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9885491
- **Project number:** 1R37MH119194-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Katie McLaughlin
- **Activity code:** R37 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,630,563
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9885491

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9885491, Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Underlying Stress Vulnerability during Adolescence (1R37MH119194-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9885491. Licensed CC0.

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