Emotion processing: Risk for psychopathology

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is the first competitive renewal of a project designed to understand the effects of abuse on children's brain-behavioral development. Studies of non-human animals have shown that adverse parental care shapes the development of the neural systems that underlie risk for mental health problems. Our work during the initial project period successfully highlighted the importance of perceptual and attentional processes as mechanisms underlying the emotional difficulties of maltreated children. This next phase of research will clarify the biological basis of these links, examine risk and protective factors, and identify the factors that place children at risk for particular forms of mental illness. The proposed work is designed to motivate development of clinical intervention trials during a subsequent project period. This application proposes to harness behavioral, cognitive neuro-physiological, anatomical, genetic, and neuro-endocrine measures to clarify the developmental mechanisms linking early stress in childhood with the emergence of mental health problems in adolescence. We will: (1) Determine the stability of the link between early stress experience and emotion processing measures across children's development; (2) Identify how specific aspects of emotion processing are associated with different forms of mental illness; (3) Specify the biological mechanisms which serve as links between children's early emotional experiences, regulation of emotion in childhood, and emergence of mental illness. Measurements will employ biological approaches including cognitive psycho-physiological, brain imaging, genetic and neuro-endocrine methods. In sum, this application proposes a continuing program of research that will examine altered emotional regulatory processes associated with child abuse and that will link these measures to mental health outcomes. This project has potential to synthesize key areas necessary to advance prevention and treatment of mental health problems in children and adults. Those include understanding the neurobiology of the brain's regulation of emotion and response to chronic social stress, the sensitivity of the human brain to contextual or environmental influences, and the ways in which the environment creates long-term effects on human behavior. Each of these foci holds tremendous promise for advancement of knowledge and application to improvement of public health.