Why Adolescence?
Adolescence is an exciting developmental period full of learning, discovery, and joy. With the onset of puberty and transition to middle school, teens' brains, emotions, and social environments change dramatically. These changes help teens successfully navigate complex new environments. Unfortunately, though, these changes also coincide with increases in rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs). In our lab, we study how social threat and reward processes (e.g., neural responses to peer rejection and acceptance; emotional responses to positive and negative feedback from peers on social media) develop during adolescence and contribute to increases in anxiety and STBs, with the goal of identifying new intervention targets. We integrate ecologically-valid methods at multiple levels of analysis into this work, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and passive sensing.
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Research Questions
How do social threat and reward processes develop during adolescence?
Sensitivity to social threat and reward, particularly social threat and reward from peers, is essential for helping adolescents navigate increasingly complex social environments and fulfill tasks critical of this developmental period (e.g., individuation, joining peer groups). However, heightened neural and behavioral sensitivity to social threat, as well as deficits in sensitivity to social reward, have been linked to psychopathology, including anxiety and depression, in adolescents. The goal of our research in this area is three-fold:
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First, we aim to develop and test ecologically-valid methods to study social threat and reward processes (e.g., social reward learning, emotional and neural responses to social threat and reward) in adolescence. Towards this aim, we work with youth research advisory boards and conduct focus groups to inform our assessments of socially threatening and rewarding experiences across different ages and cultural groups.
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Second, we use these methods (including fMRI and ecological momentary assessment) to characterize social threat and reward processes occurring in the brain, in daily life, and on social media.
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Third, we link these methods to characterize brain-behavior associations supporting the development of social threat and reward sensitivity in childhood and adolescence. For example, we have studied how brain responses to social threat and reward from peers are associated with how early adolescent girls perceive and respond to social threat and reward in their real worlds (Sequeira et al., 2021, SCAN; Sequeira, Rosen, et al., 2021, DCN).
​What is the role of reward processes (especially social reward processes) in the development of anxiety disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors during adolescence?
Anxiety disorders have historically been studied in relation to heightened threat reactivity, but despite decades of research on threat-related pathophysiological mechanisms of anxiety development, we are only effectively treating 50-60% of youth with anxiety disorders presenting for treatment. This arm of our lab aims to move beyond threat to consider more closely how anxiety develops in relation to reward systems (e.g., Sequeira et al., 2021, AJP; Sequeira et al., 2023, JAD). In this domain, we study how different aspects of reward processing at multiple units of analysis (e.g., self-reported positive affect, neural responses to rewards) support the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders, especially social anxiety disorder, during adolescence. The goal of this research is to elucidate biobehavioral mechanisms contributing to anxiety in adolescence and identify how to better capitalize on the reward system to improve interventions for youth with anxiety disorders. Additionally, our lab is interested in better understanding reward-related factors contributing to STBs in youth with primary anxiety disorders. STBs are often studied in the context of depression, and we are interested in understanding whether the mechanisms underlying STBs are similar in youth with primary anxiety disorders relative to youth with primary depressive disorders. ​
