Thursday, December 4, 2025 12/4/2025

Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Underlying Stress Vulnerability during Adolescence

Award Number: R37MH119194
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2020
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2026

Group Awards By:

View Award Description

Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Underlying Stress Vulnerability during Adolescence - PROJECT SUMMARY Exposure to stressful life events (SLEs) is involved in the etiology of most forms of psychopathology, and SLEs occurring early in development are particularly strong predictors of mental health problems. Most adolescent disorder onsets are temporally preceded by a major SLE. Yet, the mechanisms linking SLEs to the onset of adolescent psychopathology remain poorly understood. Prior research on mechanisms linking SLEs with youth mental disorders has focused largely on severe forms of adversity like abuse, neglect, and institutionalization. It is unknown whether similar mechanisms are involved in the link between less severe SLEs and psychopathology. Perhaps more critically, existing work has relied largely on cross-sectional between-subjects designs that compare children with exposure to some type of SLE to children without that experience. There is a dearth of longitudinal studies examining how SLEs influence emotion, cognition, behavior, and neural circuits within-individuals over time in ways that predict the emergence of psychopathology. The proposed research addresses this gap, using a novel methodological approach that permits examination of dynamic changes in emotion, cognition, social behavior, and neural function and connectivity following SLEs at a sufficiently fine grained level of temporal specificity to identify mechanisms underlying the link between SLEs and adolescent psychopathology as they unfold in real time. Specifically, the project will examine how monthly fluctuations in exposure to SLEs within-individuals predict subsequent changes in emotional processing in the Negative and Positive Valence Systems, Cognitive Control, Social Processes, and neural function and connectivity over a 12-month period. In addition to monthly assessments of SLEs, psychopathology, and potential mechanisms, passive monitoring of activity, sleep, and social behavior (e.g., interaction with peers through text and social media) through smartphones and wearable devices will allow additional mechanisms to be assessed passively and without subject burden. The study will investigate whether monthly variation in these emotional, cognitive, social, and neural processes predicts later increases in internalizing and externalizing problems in an accelerated cohort design with monthly assessments spanning age 11-18 years, producing 1,680 monthly observations over the study period. The longitudinal design and high-frequency assessments are innovative in allowing the identification of mechanisms that are altered by SLEs and prospectively predict psychopathology with high temporal specificity during a developmental period associated with increases in SLE exposure, stress vulnerability, and risk for psychopathology. Study findings will provide critical information regarding the specific domains of emotion, cognition, social behavior, and neural function that are altered by exposure to SLEs and increase vulnerability to psychopathology. These mechanisms represent modifiable targets for interventions to prevent the onset of stress-related psychopathology in children and adolescents.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2026 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2026	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	11/20/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2025	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	4/29/2025	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$0
2025	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	003	5	7/9/2025	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$0
2025	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	5	5/20/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
2025	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	5	7/9/2025	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $1,853,441 )
2024	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	5	8/30/2024	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$126,268
2024	2024	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE STE 3	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	5	8/29/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$1,727,173
														Subtotal = $1,853,441

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $2,071,852 )
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	4	7/13/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$1,854,670
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	003	4	8/10/2023	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$126,268
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	12/15/2022	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$90,914
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	002	4	7/14/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	-$127,497
2023	2023	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	004	4	8/29/2023	SUPPLEMENT FOR EXPANSION	$127,497
														Subtotal = $2,071,852

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $1,727,173 )
2022	2022	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	3	8/19/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$1,727,173
														Subtotal = $1,727,173

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $2,268,420 )
2021	2021	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	001	2	6/15/2021	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$1,722,115
2021	2020	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	6/2/2021	NEW	$546,305
														Subtotal = $2,268,420

Issue Date FY: 2020 ( Subtotal = $1,630,563 )
2020	2020	PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE	1033 MASSACHUSETTS AVE 5TH FL	CAMBRIDGE	MA	02138	MIDDLESEX	USA	Mental Health Research Grants	000	1	5/11/2020	NEW	$1,630,563
														Subtotal = $1,630,563

Grand Total All Awards = $9,551,449

Top

All Categories

About

Search

Reports

Data Submission

Award Information

Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms Underlying Stress Vulnerability during Adolescence

Award Number: R37MH119194

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MENTAL HEALTH

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 07/01/2020

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 06/30/2026

Federal Websites

Department of Health & Human Services

HHS Operating Divisions

HHS Staff Divisions

Download A Document Viewer