# Early Life Adversity, Biological Embedding, and Risk for Developmental Precursors of Mental Disorders

> **NIH NIH R01** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $2,343,175

## Abstract

Project Summary: Early life psychosocial adversity and stress are well-established as the most powerful
environmental risk factors for poor neurodevelopmental and mental health outcomes in children. Impairments in
developing emotion regulation and cognitive control and associated alterations in brain development have been
shown to mediate the effects of adversity on risk for the development of psychopathology. Early psychosocial
adversity impacts the epigenetic and inflammation-mediated processes that contribute to these negative
outcomes, a process known as “biological embedding of stress.” While this risk trajectory has been clearly linked
to increased rates of psychopathology, the mechanisms of this process, its targetable mediators and how early
in development they operate are yet to be determined. Here we focus on the effects of early life adversity on
brain, emotion regulation and cognitive control outcomes relevant to risk for mental disorders, beginning
antenatally and extending to age 3. We will examine the role of pre- and postnatal adversity/stress, the maternal
and child perinatal gut microbiome and early caregiver support on these key neurodevelopmental outcomes
utilizing state-of-the-art neuroimaging. Our unifying hypothesis is that these factors modulate systemic
inflammatory responses, induce neuronal effects through this and other processes that adversely impact brain
development in limbic and cortical regions, and mediate the effects of early adversity on child emotion regulation,
cognitive control and mental health outcomes. These factors will be studied in a unique, prospectively
ascertained cohort of 370 mothers and their offspring at high psychosocial risk being recruited as part of an
already funded March of Dimes project at Washington University. The cohort will include both term- and
prematurely-born infants and toddlers given the increased risk of psychosocial adversity and aberrant gut
microbiome in preterm children. The offspring will be intensively prospectively studied from the 1st trimester to
age 3, providing a unique dataset in which to examine the interrelationships among pre- and postnatal adversity,
biomarkers of inflammation, the gut microbiome and developmental and mental health outcomes. The perinatal
and early childhood periods are critical times to study these exposures as adverse neurodevelopment associated
with adversity begins in utero through fetal programming. Likewise, the perinatal period is a critical
developmental window for microbial influences, when gut microbial colonization has its most enduring effects.
The proposed study merges established research groups in these areas in a center with advanced infant and
childhood neuroimaging and extensive microbiome expertise, and offers an unprecedented opportunity to
understand the mechanisms of the biological embedding of adversity on brain, cognitive and emotional
trajectories in a high-risk cohort. We will also apply innovative computational methods...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9929031
- **Project number:** 5R01MH113883-03
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** JOAN L. LUBY
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $2,343,175
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-05-22 → 2023-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9929031

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9929031, Early Life Adversity, Biological Embedding, and Risk for Developmental Precursors of Mental Disorders (5R01MH113883-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9929031. Licensed CC0.

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