Saturday, May 17, 2025
5/17/2025
Unpredictable Parent Behavior in Infancy and Subsequent Emotion Regulation, Brain Function, and Psychopathology - PROJECT SUMMARY Early caregiving is a critical determinant of healthy socio-emotional development and the capacity for adaptive emotion regulation (ER). Parental socio-emotional signals (e.g., warmth, support, responsiveness) during infancy are critical for the development of ER and protection against emotion dysregulation, a transdiagnostic indicator of risk for child psychopathology. Yet, the mechanisms by which parent behavior influences brain systems that support ER to increase psychiatric risk are unknown. Animal studies identify unpredictability (UN), the entropy in the patterns in parent behavior, as one mechanism by which parenting directly alters the maturation of emotional circuits. In parallel human studies, high UN in parent sensory signals (UN-sens; transitions between visual, auditory, and tactile behaviors) during infancy predicts childhood deficits in effortful control. This K01 will expand upon these findings and test the hypothesis that the UN of parent socio-emotional signals (UN-emo; the inconsistency of nurturing/supportive behaviors) observed during the first year of life alters the neurodevelopment of ER to increase risk for child psychopathology. Specifically, this K01 will investigate how UN-emo observed in early parent behavior relates to subsequent brain function (functional connectivity and evoked responses) supporting ER in early childhood. This K01 offers an unprecedented opportunity to address critical gaps in the mechanisms underlying the relationship between early caregiving, development of ER, and risk for psychopathology by testing an integrative model that incorporates biological, behavioral, and experiential factors. This time-sensitive innovative proposal leverages a rich, ongoing longitudinal study from birth to age 8 years with existing or ongoing observational (parent-child interactions), behavioral (ER), brain imaging (resting- state fMRI), and clinical (psychopathology) data. The applicant will add new coding (UN) and data collection (movie-fMRI) to investigate the impact of UN in parent behavior (both UN-sens and UN-emo) at age 1 year on the development of ER (age 1-6 years) and the functioning of brain systems supporting ER (age 6 years) including their role in predicting child psychopathology. Dissecting how early ER and brain function that support ER are altered by early caregiving will motivate and inform the design of novel parenting interventions that decrease UN-emo and resulting psychiatric risk. When combined with her extensive neuroimaging experience, background in functional brain organization, and expertise in complex computational techniques, the proposed targeted training in 1) observation of parenting during infancy, 2) measurement of early indicators of child psychopathology, and 3) examination of brain function in early childhood using movie-fMRI will uniquely enable the applicant to apply a developmental neuroscience approach to investigate how the emerging parent-child relationship shapes developing brain function to predispose children to psychopathology. This K01 will facilitate an R01 proposal that uncovers the mechanisms by which early parent behavior impacts the development, organization, and functioning of brain systems that underlie mental health problems, beginning in infancy.
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