Grant: Discovery Horizons

Children and youth are invaluable resources. Investing in children’s health and prosperity, particularly in the first 1,000 days (i.e., conception to 2 years of age), represents a 'sensitive window' to offer all children a healthy start in life to grow strong and have a bright future. While advancements in education, medicine and social welfare have been made to promote optimal brain development, presently the number of children who fail to achieve their full developmental potential is increasing in Canada. Many disparities are attributed to vulnerabilities related to medical errors and environmental adversities. Yet, despite the known associations between biological and social adversity on brain health and development, studies on the relationship of these determinants with child brain maturation, are scarce. Characterizing biological and social determinants, that may represent long-term risks for behavioural, cognitive, and social challenges in children, will provide novel insight regarding the underlying mechanisms of typical and atypical brain development. OBJECTIVES The overarching goal of this proposal is to understand the effects of biological and social adversity on the developing brain. We will employ high-resolution data analysis of perinatal health indicators, lifestyle factors, infant neuroimaging data, and childhood psychological and physical outcomes, in diverse populations to identify key risk and resilience factors. We will investigate this in a multisite study across the following objectives: 1. Examine how social and biological adversity are associated with alterations in infant brain structure and function within 1 month of age, including resilience factors that may moderate this relationship. 2. Determine whether brain structure and function assessed during the first month of life is predictive of 6-month brain maturation, and moderating factors. 3. Examine brain development between 1 and 6-months and the relationship with cognitive, motor and social-emotional profiles at 24 months and identify factors that characterize vulnerabilities to social and biological determinants of health. NOVELTY & SIGNIFICANCE Characterizing development in healthy and fragile populations using advanced neuroimaging methods along with deep-phenotyping will permit high-resolution mappings among brain development, biosocial stress, and behaviour and will help identify windows of brain plasticity and vulnerability that could be targeted by interventions.