Faculty Bibliography

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, research institutions across the globe have modified their operations in ways that have limited or eliminated the amount of permissible in-person research interaction. In order to prevent the loss of important developmentally-timed data during the pandemic, researchers have quickly pivoted and developed innovative methods for remote assessment of research participants. In this manuscript, we describe methods developed for remote assessment of a parent child cohort with a focus on examining the perinatal environment, behavioral and biological indicators of child neurobehavioral development, parent-child interaction, as well as parent and child mental and physical health. We include recommendations relevant to adapting in-laboratory assessments for remote data collection and conclude with a description of the successful dissemination of the methods to eight research sites across the United States, each of whom are involved in Phase 1 of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study. These remote methods were born out of pandemic-related necessity; however, they have much wider applicability and may offer advantages over in-laboratory neurodevelopmental assessments.

Brain and cognitive development is a burgeoning area of scientific inquiry, with tremendous potential to better the lives of children. Large scale longitudinal neuroimaging studies offer opportunities for significant scientific advances in our understanding of developing brain structure and function. The proposed manuscript will focus on the scientific potential of the HEALthy Brain and Cognitive Development (HBCD) Study, highlighting what questions these data can and what they cannot answer about child development. Specifically, we caution against the misuse of these data for advancing de-contextualized and scientifically questionable narratives about the development of children from marginalized communities. We will focus on building and organizing a framework for interpreting HBCD data through the lens of sampling, cultural context, measurement, and developmental science theory. Our goal is to thoughtfully offer the scientific community opportunities to use the large scale and collaborative nature of HBCD to collectively revise practices in developmental science that to-date have not carefully considered their own role in perpetuating narratives that support systemic injustice.

The present study investigated associations between prenatal mother-father cortisol linkage and infant executive functions. Data come from an international sample (N = 358) of predominantly white and middle- to upper-class first-time parents. During late pregnancy, parents collected diurnal salivary cortisol samples and reported on levels of psychological stress. At 24 months, children completed a battery of executive function tasks. Parent cortisol linkage was operationalized as the time-dependent, within-dyad association between maternal and paternal diurnal cortisol. Results indicated that prenatal linkage was positively related to infant executive functions, suggesting that stronger mother-father cortisol linkage was associated with higher executive function scores. Additionally, this relation was moderated by paternal average cortisol levels such that executive function scores were lower when fathers had higher average cortisol levels and linkage was weak. This association suggests that elevated paternal cortisol amplifies the negative relation between lower cortisol linkage and lower infant executive function scores. Importantly, these findings were observed while controlling for observational measures of caregiving and self-report measures of psychosocial functioning and infant social-emotional behavior. These results suggest that prenatal linkage of mother's and father's stress physiology plays a potentially important part in programming and regulating infant neurocognitive development.

Increasing evidence supports a link between maternal prenatal cannabis use and altered neural and physiological development of the child. However, whether cannabis use relates to altered human brain development prior to birth, and specifically, whether maternal prenatal cannabis use relates to connectivity of fetal functional brain systems, remains an open question. The major objective of this study was to identify whether maternal prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) is associated with variation in human brain hippocampal functional connectivity prior to birth. Prenatal drug toxicology and fetal fMRI data were available in a sample of 115 fetuses [43 % female; mean age 32.2 weeks (SD = 4.3)]. Voxelwise hippocampal connectivity analysis in a subset of age and sex-matched fetuses revealed that PCE was associated with alterations in fetal dorsolateral, medial and superior frontal, insula, anterior temporal, and posterior cingulate connectivity. Classification of group differences by age 5 outcomes suggest that compared to the non-PCE group, the PCE group is more likely to have increased connectivity to regions associated with less favorable outcomes and to have decreased connectivity to regions associated with more favorable outcomes. This is preliminary evidence that altered fetal neural connectome may contribute to neurobehavioral vulnerability observed in children exposed to cannabis in utero.

BACKGROUND:Increasing reports of long-term symptoms following COVID-19 infection, even among mild cases, necessitates systematic investigation into the prevalence and type of lasting illness. Notably, there is limited data regarding the influence of social determinants of health, like perceived discrimination and economic stress, which may exacerbate COVID-19 health risks. The primary goals of this study are to test the bearing of subjective experiences of discrimination, financial security, and quality of care on illness severity and lasting symptom complaints. METHODS:logistic regressions tested social determinants hypothesized to predict neurological, cognitive, or mood symptoms. RESULTS:70.6% of patients reported presence of one or more lasting symptoms after recovery. Neural systems were especially impacted, and 19.4% and 25.1% of patients reported mood or cognitive/memory complaints, respectively. Path models demonstrated that frequency and stress about experiences of discrimination predicted increased illness severity and increased lasting symptom count, even when adjusting for sociodemographic factors and mental/physical health comorbidities. Notably, this effect was specific to stress related to discrimination, and did not extend to general stress levels. Further, perceived but not objective socioeconomic status (SES) was associated with increased lasting symptom complaints after recovery. Finally, associations between discrimination and illness differed with individual perceptions about quality of medical care. CONCLUSIONS:Lasting symptoms after recovery from COVID-19 are highly prevalent and neural systems are significantly impacted. Importantly, psychosocial factors (perceived discrimination and perceived SES) can exacerbate individual health risk. This study provides actionable directions for improved health outcomes by establishing that sociodemographic risk and medical care influence near and long-ranging health outcomes.

One pathway by which environments of socioeconomic risk are thought to affect cognitive development is through stress physiology. The biological systems underpinning stress and attention undergo a sensitive period of development during infancy. Psychobiological theory emphasizes a dynamic pattern of context-dependent development, however, research has yet to examine how basal cortisol and attention dynamically covary across infancy in ecologically valid contexts. Thus, to address these gaps, we leveraged longitudinal, multilevel analytic methods to disentangle between- from within-person associations of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity and executive attention behaviors across infancy. We use data from a large longitudinal sample (N = 1,292) of infants in predominantly low-income, nonurban communities at 7-, 15-, and 24-months of age. Using multilevel models, we investigated longitudinal associations of infant attention and basal cortisol levels and examined caregiving behaviors as moderators of this relationship. Results indicated a negative between- and within-person association between attention and cortisol across infancy and a within-person moderation by caregiver responsiveness. In other words, on the within-person level, higher levels of cortisol were concomitantly associated with lower infant attention across the first 2 years of life. However, variation in the caregiver's level of responsiveness either buffered or sensitized the executive attention system to the negative effects of physiological stress.

The United States is the only high-income country that does not have a national policy mandating paid leave to working women who give birth. Increased rates of maternal employment post-birth call for greater understanding of the effects of family leave on infant development. This study examined the links between paid leave and toddler language, cognitive, and socioemotional outcomes (24-36 months; N = 328). Results indicate that paid leave was associated with better language outcomes, regardless of socioeconomic status. Additionally, paid leave was correlated with fewer infant behavior problems for mothers with lower levels of educational attainment. Expanding access to policies that support families in need, like paid family leave, may aid in reducing socioeconomic disparities in infant development.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW/OBJECTIVE:We review the state of the literature examining associations between early life stress (ELS), gut microbiota, and neurocognitive development and mental health in animals and humans. We identify gaps in current models and areas for future research. RECENT FINDINGS/RESULTS:ELS is associated with changes in gut microbiota, which correspond to changes in affective and cognitive functioning in both animals and humans. Some of these ELS-induced psychological changes can be remedied by supplementation with probiotics in early life, suggesting a potential area for intervention for ELS-exposed children. Prenatal stress exposure is rarely studied in humans in relation to gut microbiota, but animal work has suggested important associations between prenatal stress and fetal programming that should be tested in humans. The gut microbiota plays an important role in the association between ELS, neurocognitive development, and mental health. More work is needed to fully understand these associations in humans.

Characteristics of the home language environment, independent of socioeconomic background, may account for disparities in early language abilities. Past studies have reported links between the quantity of language input within the home and differences in brain function during early childhood. The current study examined associations between home language input and EEG brain activity in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 6- to 12-month-old infants (N = 94). Replicating past studies, a positive correlation was found between measures of socioeconomic status and language input. Examining links between language input and brain activity, analyses yielded a negative association, with children who heard more adult words in the home demonstrating reduced EEG beta power (13-19 Hz) in the parietal region. Exploratory analyses revealed a significant interaction between language input and the amount of chaos and disorganization in the home. Specifically, among children living in high-chaos households, children who heard more adult words tended to have reduced EEG activity. Among children living in low-chaos homes, there was no link between adult word count and children's EEG activity. These findings demonstrate the importance of the early home environment context in shaping neurocognitive trajectories.

Chronic stress has been increasingly linked with aberrations in children's behavioral, cognitive, and social development, yet the effect of chronic physiological stress on neural development during the first year of life is largely unknown. The present study aims to link a physiological index of chronic stress (maternal hair cortisol concentration) to maturational differences in infant functional brain development during the first year of life. Participants were 94 mother-infant dyads. To index chronic physiological stress, maternal hair samples were assayed for the previous three months' cortisol output. To examine the development of brain function during the first year of life, six-to-twelve-month-old infants (N = 94) completed a resting electroencephalography (EEG) recording. Infants of mothers with evidence of higher physiological stress showed increased relative low-frequency (theta) power and reduced relative high-frequency (alpha, high-gamma) power, compared to infants of mothers with evidence of low physiological stress. This pattern of findings is consistent with other studies suggesting that early life stress may lead to alterations in patterns of infant brain development. These findings are important given that maturational lags in brain development can be long-lasting and are associated with deficits in cognitive and emotional development. The present research also suggests that reducing maternal physiological stress may be a useful target for future interventions aiming to foster neurodevelopment during the first year of life.