A Pitt team received a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health

Jamie Hanson, an associate professor in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology, and colleagues have been awarded $3.3 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to study early life adversity.

Pitt co-investigators on the award are Jennifer Silk, a professor in the Dietrich School’s Department of Psychology, and Dana Tudorascu, associate professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. The team will also collaborate with George Slavich, UCLA professor and founding director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research.

The NIH funding will support the research team in studying how early life adversity — including experiences such as physical abuse, child neglect and exposure to violence — impacts positive emotions and brain development in adolescents aged 13-16. The research will use different brain imaging tasks and smartphone-based tracking to understand how adverse childhood experiences affect brain circuits involved in positive emotions and depression risk. The study focuses on positive emotions rather than just negative ones and measures emotional responses as they unfold over time both in the lab and in daily life.

A research scientist in Pitt’s Learning Research and Development Center, Hanson studies how children and adolescents learn about their environment, how brain circuitry involved with learning may be impacted by early life stress and how these brain changes may confer risks for negative outcomes. Silk studies the development of affective disorders in adolescents as well as the intersection of neurobiological risk factors and social experiences.