Natalie Hiromi Brito, Ph.D. - US grants

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT My career goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research group that investigates the influence of early environmental variations on cognitive development and future academic success. To acquire the specific training I will need to achieve this, I propose a project that measures socioeconomic status (SES), potential mediators, brain function, and memory during infancy to examine the mechanisms through which both SES disparities and bilingualism operate independently and jointly to influence developmental trajectories. Specifically, I, and my future lab, will integrate EEG neurophysiological measures and developmental psychology behavioral paradigms in order to investigate the effects of the linguistic environment and stress on memory across monolingual and bilingual infants from diverse SES backgrounds. My training to date has provided me with a strong foundation in behavioral paradigms assessing cognitive development; my career development plan expands on these methods, providing essential new training in EEG/ERP techniques, measurement of stress, and data collection with a low-income minority population. Since it is my goal to lead a lab that integrates a diverse set of methodologies to address interdisciplinary questions within the field of child development, my success as an independent researcher depends on these skills. Research Project An estimated 1 in 5 American children under the age of 6 live below the poverty line. Growing up in a lower SES home has been associated with substantially worse health and impaired psychological, cognitive, and emotional development throughout the lifespan. Further, it is well established that socioeconomic disadvantage in early childhood is associated with a range of negative effects on later cognitive development and academic achievement. Although some studies have suggested that bilingualism may buffer the cognitive risk associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, others have claimed that differences in SES may attenuate any bilingual advantages found in cognitive skills. Very few studies have attempted to examine the independent and joint effects of SES and bilingualism on early cognitive development, and furthermore no study to date has examined this topic during infancy. Thus, the proposed studies will examine SES, multiple language exposure, and hypothesized pathways through which socioeconomic disparities contribute to individual variation in early memory development. The first study will examine SES disparities in newborn brain function across infants from monolingual and bilingual backgrounds. The second study will measure the home linguistic environment as a possible mediator between SES and memory. Finally, I will utilize both neural and behavioral measures to assess the associations between SES, home linguistic environment, maternal stress, and the development of memory over the first year of life. Disentangling the independent and interacting effects of SES and bilingualism on cognitive development is crucial for identifying mechanisms of risk and resilience, and possible interventions, for lower SES minority children.

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT My career goal is to lead an interdisciplinary research group that investigates the influence of early environmental variations on cognitive development and future academic success. To acquire the specific training I will need to achieve this, I propose a project that measures socioeconomic status (SES), potential mediators, brain function, and memory during infancy to examine the mechanisms through which both SES disparities and bilingualism operate independently and jointly to influence developmental trajectories. Specifically, I, and my future lab, will integrate EEG neurophysiological measures and developmental psychology behavioral paradigms in order to investigate the effects of the linguistic environment and stress on memory across monolingual and bilingual infants from diverse SES backgrounds. My training to date has provided me with a strong foundation in behavioral paradigms assessing cognitive development; my career development plan expands on these methods, providing essential new training in EEG/ERP techniques, measurement of stress, and data collection with a low-income minority population. Since it is my goal to lead a lab that integrates a diverse set of methodologies to address interdisciplinary questions within the field of child development, my success as an independent researcher depends on these skills. Research Project An estimated 1 in 5 American children under the age of 6 live below the poverty line. Growing up in a lower SES home has been associated with substantially worse health and impaired psychological, cognitive, and emotional development throughout the lifespan. Further, it is well established that socioeconomic disadvantage in early childhood is associated with a range of negative effects on later cognitive development and academic achievement. Although some studies have suggested that bilingualism may buffer the cognitive risk associated with socioeconomic disadvantage, others have claimed that differences in SES may attenuate any bilingual advantages found in cognitive skills. Very few studies have attempted to examine the independent and joint effects of SES and bilingualism on early cognitive development, and furthermore no study to date has examined this topic during infancy. Thus, the proposed studies will examine SES, multiple language exposure, and hypothesized pathways through which socioeconomic disparities contribute to individual variation in early memory development. The first study will examine SES disparities in newborn brain function across infants from monolingual and bilingual backgrounds. The second study will measure the home linguistic environment as a possible mediator between SES and memory. Finally, I will utilize both neural and behavioral measures to assess the associations between SES, home linguistic environment, maternal stress, and the development of memory over the first year of life. Disentangling the independent and interacting effects of SES and bilingualism on cognitive development is crucial for identifying mechanisms of risk and resilience, and possible interventions, for lower SES minority children.

PROJECT SUMMARY The prenatal period is regarded as one of the most sensitive phases in human development. Events that occur during gestation can alter the course of development with lasting impact. Presently, the COVID-19 pandemic is exerting wide-spread impact on the lives of expectant mothers around the world. Particularly salient pandemic- related stressors that are being experienced by pregnant women are social isolation and uncertainty stress. There is ample physiological and behavioral literature showing that social isolation and uncertainty stress affect typical human and animal psychobiological functioning, but there is an absence of knowledge about how these conditions might impact the physical and psychological health of a pregnant woman, and what the consequences of those changes might be for her developing child. The central objective of this proposal is to build foundational knowledge about the effects of prenatal social isolation and uncertainty stress on maternal psychobiology and infant neurobehavior. We will explore several candidate physiological systems in the mother to elucidate mechanisms that underlie associations between maternal stressors and child outcomes. To achieve these goals, we will recruit 200 women from a large New York City cohort established at the height of the pandemic into a prospective, longitudinal study that will include pre- and postnatal biospecimen collection and child neurobehavioral assessments at 6-, 12- and 24 months. Multi-modal neuroimaging strategies, including infant EEG and quantitative MRI, and innovative remote biophysical data collection strategies will be employed. The primary aims of this project are to (i) examine the impact of prenatal social isolation and uncertainty stress on maternal biology and postnatal mental health; (ii) evaluate the influence of maternal prenatal social isolation and uncertainty stress on infant neurobehavioral development; and (iii) examine the role of prenatal social isolation and uncertainty stress on mother-infant bi-directional interactions. We will thus be able to meaningfully evaluate whether, and how, prenatal social isolation and uncertainty stress modify maternal biology and affect, and the neurobehavioral consequences of those impacts on infants. Such work would constitute a substantial advance in our understanding of the longitudinal effects of prenatal psychosocial stress exposures, the underlying mechanistic pathways, and the origins of child neurobehavioral disorders.

PROJECT SUMMARY Societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are unprecedented. The global community has been crippled by a public health emergency that has had deleterious health and economic impacts, the scope of which has yet to be determined. As a result of the current crisis, pregnant women and new mothers are currently experiencing dramatic loss of medical, financial, and social support, resulting in higher rates of emotional distress. It is well established that chronic stress can be embedded in the developing neurobiological system, particularly during sensitive periods of life, but how the timing of maternal stressors and pathways through which these experiences impact child neurobehavioral development are unclear. The central objective of this proposal is to examine the association between perinatal COVID-19 stress and longitudinal postnatal brain development, and to rigorously evaluate timing of exposure, underlying biological mechanisms and postnatal protective factors. We will enroll 300 women and children from the New York City (NYC) COVID-19 Perinatal Experiences (COPE) cohort into a longitudinal protocol that will measure child biobehavioral outcomes at 12-, 24-, and 36-months. The COPE cohort is comprised of more than 900 women that were enrolled into a longitudinal assessment protocol at the height of the pandemic, approximately half of which were pregnant (54%) and half of which were new mothers (46%). The primary aims of this project are to (i) identify key windows of perinatal stress vulnerability; (ii) evaluate biological pathways that underlie associations between maternal COVID-19 stressors and infant neurocognition; and (iii) isolate protective factors in the postnatal environment that promote resilient outcomes in children exposed to extreme perinatal stress. We will selectively recruit the proposed subsample for this study based on balance of timing of exposure, severity of stressors, and sociodemographic factors. We will thus be able to meaningfully evaluate biological consequences of perinatal stress with control over both timing and aggregate risk. Such work would constitute a substantial advance in our understanding of the longitudinal effects of maternal perinatal stress on early human brain development and would also offer potential avenues for promoting healthy outcomes in children born at the height of history?s most significant perinatal stressor.