In order to understand healthy neurodevelopment — and the threats to that health — researchers need a more comprehensive understanding of how the brain grows throughout childhood and young adulthood.
To that end, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $753,181 grant to Deanna Barch, chair and professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences as well as the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry and professor of radiology at the School of Medicine, all at Washington University in St. Louis.
Barch will be working with co-principal investigator Leah Somerville, professor of psychology at Harvard University, to generate an account of “typical” neurodevelopment in 5- to 21-year-olds in order to:
- identify age versus pubertal- and hormonal-based mechanisms that undergird development in childhood and adolescence;
- conduct systematic analysis across brain structure, function and connectivity using state-of-the-art acquisition and analysis approaches; and
- evaluate maturational variation in multimodal coupling across brain systems/modalities as a function of development.
