2013 — 2017 |
Morgan, Judith K. |
K01Activity Code Description: For support of a scientist, committed to research, in need of both advanced research training and additional experience. |
Neural and Social Processes of Positive Affect in Children At Risk For Depression @ University of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Children of depressed mothers are three times more likely to develop depression in their lifetime. However, mechanisms of risk from mother to child are unclear, although research supports the importance of neural response to reward and of maternal socialization processes in the development of depression. Developmental affective neuroscience models suggest that depression is a disorder of problematic social functioning, with alterations in enjoying rewards within social contexts, and these reward-related difficulties may be associated with transmission of risk. Given that the development of psychopathology begins long before the emergence of symptoms, and given the importance of understanding early trajectories toward depression, the proposed MRSDA focuses on developmental changes that occur in the early school age period. Evaluating neural and behavioral processing of social rewards during the early school period may elucidate whether high risk children show alterations in positive affect during this developmental shift in social contexts and if these alterations are related to maternal socialization. The proposed MRSDA bridges the candidate's prior expertise in early childhood affective development with innovative research in developmental affective neuroscience to uniquely position her as a translational researcher evaluating clinically-relevant, reward-related neurobehavioral differences in early school age children at risk for depression. It is proposed that the combination of low positive affect and maternal discouragement of positive affect may contribute to self-regulatory processes that dampen positive affect during this developmental period, even though clinical levels of depressive symptoms may not emerge until the onset of puberty. To appropriately evaluate her research questions, the candidate will receive training in functional neuroanatomical and neural bases of affective and social processes across childhood and adolescence. The candidate will advance her training in maternal socialization processes associated with positive affect; designing, adapting, and conducting fMRI paradigms that assess reward function with a young child population; and advanced statistical analysis to evaluate brain-behavior associations and to conduct future longitudinal studies on the trajectory of risk for depression across development. Her mentorship team has extensive experience in developmental affective neuroscience and maternal socialization patterns (Drs. Forbes, Allen, Silk, Goodman), utilization of functional neuroimaging in young children to answer clinically-relevant questions (Drs. Luby and Perlman), and advanced statistical analysis (Dr. Iyengar). Altogether, the proposed MRSDA has the potential to advance the field of developmental affective neuroscience by identifying mechanisms of risk for depression and mechanisms of change for intervention.
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0.961 |
2017 — 2021 |
Morgan, Judith K. |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Brain-Behavior Synchrony in Very Young Children and Their Depressed Mothers @ University of Pittsburgh At Pittsburgh
Project Abstract. Children of depressed mothers are at increased risk for developing multiple psychiatric disorders in their lifetime. Devastatingly, these affective and behavioral disorders appear to emerge early in these high risk youth, with some studies showing elevated rates by age 5 or 6?highlighting the need to uncover etiological mechanisms that occur in the first five years of life. One putative mechanism of risk for psychopathology is aberrant responding in reward and social circuitry that is associated with less motivation for and pleasurable enjoyment of positive experiences. However, when, how, and why these reward disruptions emerge is unclear. One possibility is that compromised caregiving during the first years of life may fail to reinforce healthy reward function in offspring, given that warm, synchronous interactions appear to serve as a social reward. The conceptual model of this proposed BRAINS award is that positive reciprocal and synchronous interactions between mother and child during the crucial infant- toddler years may serve to reinforce brain development in offspring reward systems via oxytocin- dopamine-frontostriatal pathways. For children of depressed mothers, this loop may be compromised by less synchronous interactions and the negative impact of these asynchronous interactions may have cascade effects for child social behavior, including affect regulation with and by others, perspective- taking, and empathy, and for child psychiatric illness, especially anxiety and disruptive disorders. Using a multi-method, accelerated longitudinal design, a diverse sample of 160 mothers (half meeting criteria for depression) and first-born children will be recruited into three cohorts (at child age 12 months, 24 months, and 36 months at study entry) and will be assessed yearly for three years. Mother-child synchrony during play will be assessed for each cohort yearly using affective (shared positive affect) and behavioral (harmonious, reciprocal play) indices. Simultaneous near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), an optical imaging technique that is non-restrictive and child-friendly will be used to measure neural responding to mother-child play in both mothers and children at all ages. Mother-child synchrony of neural responding in cortical neural regions implicated in reward responding, social flexibility, synchronous interactions, and mentalizing will also be explored. Starting at child age 3, child neural response to reward and social feedback will be assessed using developmentally-appropriate NIRS reward paradigms. At age 5, children will undergo an fMRI scan to explore activity in and connectivity among reward and social networks. Changes in child prosocial behavior and aggressive behavior and emergence of preschool psychopathology (anxiety, disruptive disorders) will be measured at child ages 3-5.Mother- child bio-behavioral synchrony will be evaluated as a predictor of these changes and the onset of disorder.
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0.961 |