CAREER: Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms of Stressor Controllability and Resilience

压力是一种普遍的人类体验，可能会对心理和身体健康产生影响。压力往往在青春期增加，而发育中的大脑在生命的这一阶段对压力特别敏感。在不同的文化和世纪中，青春期被认为是身体、大脑和行为发生戏剧性变化的时期。在此期间，青少年患一些神经精神障碍的风险增加，包括焦虑和情绪障碍、精神病、进食障碍、人格障碍和物质使用障碍。最近的研究已经开始揭示青少年大脑的独特方面，这可能有助于我们了解它是如何发展和应对压力的，以及相应地，如何在年轻人生命中这段充满挑战的时期更好地支持他们。这个项目将考察经历如何塑造大脑发育和应对压力的能力，这对于增进关于如何优化幸福感的知识至关重要。虽然青春期最常被研究为风险高发期，但目前的研究将利用有关青春期大脑独特性质的知识，目标是促进弹性。更好地了解青少年大脑对压力的反应将对儿童和青少年的福祉、育儿、教育环境和公共政策产生广泛的影响。该项目的广泛影响包括广泛的指导和外展活动，这将扩大发展神经科学的包容性，为学生提供深入参与应激科学和青少年大脑发育的机会，同时还教育公众关于压力对他们生活的各种和影响。尽管压力可能是具有挑战性的，但最近的研究表明，并不是所有的压力都有负面影响。基于经历可控压力可以提高成年人韧性的证据，该项目将青春期作为大脑发育的一个独特时期，在这个时期，压力源的可控性可能对提高韧性特别有益。利用行为、生理和神经成像方法，该项目将调查压力源可控性和将可控压力与适应性应对联系起来的机械路径的影响与年龄相关的差异。研究人员将利用行为任务和功能磁共振成像(FMRI)来研究可控压力的经历如何改变发育中的大脑。研究人员假设，可控和不可控两种压力会对情绪调节和决策所需的大脑区域之间的连通性产生不同的影响，导致实验室和现实世界对后来的压力源做出更好或更差的反应。通过一系列旨在让青少年接触这两种形式的压力并进行对比的行为任务，他们希望更好地理解潜在的神经机制，以及可控压力作为一种有用的干预措施的有效性。具体地说，目标1将研究控制应激源的经历如何通过调节参与动机行为的大脑电路来影响对后来无法控制的压力的反应。目标2将研究可控压力(相对于不可控压力或无压力)如何影响有关环境可控性的推论。目标3将测试可控压力的影响在多大程度上适用于现实世界，并促进日常生活中的适应性应对行为。这项研究将为以下关键问题提供信息：神经可塑性和压力如何“深入皮下”以塑造长期的神经行为结果，以及干预措施何时以及如何最有效地提高面对压力的韧性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.