Project Abstract/Summary
Stress is a universal human experience that can have consequences for mental and physical health. Stress often increases during adolescence, and the developing brain is particularly sensitive to stress during this phase of life. Across cultures and centuries, adolescence has been noted as a time of dramatic changes in the body, brain, and behavior. During this time, youth are at heightened risk for a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety and mood disorders, psychosis, eating disorders, personality disorders, and substance use disorders. Recent work has begun to reveal unique facets of the adolescent brain that may help us to understand how it develops and responds to stress and, concomitantly, how to better support youth during this challenging time period in their lives. This project will examine how experiences shape brain development and the capacity to cope with stress, which is essential for advancing knowledge about how to optimize well-being. While adolescence is most commonly studied as a period of heightened risk, the current study will leverage knowledge about the unique nature of the adolescent brain with the goal to promote resilience. A better understanding of how the adolescent brain responds to stress will have broad implications for child and adolescent well-being, parenting, educational settings, and public policy. The broader impacts of this project include extensive mentorship and outreach activities, which will broaden inclusion in developmental neuroscience and provide opportunities for students to engage deeply with the science of stress and adolescent brain development, while also educating the general public about the varieties and effects of stress on their lives.
Although stress can be challenging, recent research has shown that not all stress has negative effects. Building upon evidence that experiencing controllable stress can promote resilience in adults, this project focuses on adolescence as a unique period of brain development when the controllability of a stressor may be particularly beneficial for promoting resilience. Using behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging approaches, this project will investigate age-related differences in the effects of stressor controllability and mechanistic pathways linking controllable stress to adaptive coping. Researchers will utilize behavioral tasks paired with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how experience with controllable stress alters the developing brain. The researchers hypothesize that two varieties of stress, controllable and uncontrollable, will have differing effects on the connectivity between brain areas needed for emotional regulation and decision-making, causing better or worse responses to later stressors in both the lab and the real world. Through a set of behavioral tasks designed to expose adolescents to both forms of stress and contrast them, they hope to gain a better understanding of the underlying neural mechanisms and the efficacy of controllable stress as a helpful intervention. Specifically, Aim 1 will examine how the experience of having control over a stressor can influence responses to later uncontrollable stress, via modulation of brain circuitry involved in motivated behavior. Aim 2 will examine how controllable stress (relative to uncontrollable or no stress) influences inferences about environmental controllability. Aim 3 will test the extent to which the effects of controllable stress generalize to real-world settings and promote adaptive coping behaviors in daily life. This research will inform critical questions about neuroplasticity and how stress “gets under the skin” to shape long-term neurobehavioral outcomes, as well as when and how interventions may be most effective for promoting resilience in the face of stress.
This award reflects NSF’s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation’s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Principal Investigator
Dylan Gee – Yale University located in NEW HAVEN, CT
Co-Principal Investigators
Funders
Funding Amount
$705,715.00
Project Start Date
09/01/2022
Project End Date
08/31/2027
Will the project remain active for the next two years?
The project has more than two years remaining
Source: National Science Foundation
Please be advised that recent changes in federal funding schemes may have impacted the project’s scope and status.
Updated: April, 2025