Teen Decisions Study

Ages: 11-17

Take a risk? Play it safe? Our lab studies these important topics by investigating the effects of social contexts on decision-making in adolescents from the community and those with a background of significant early adversity.

TAG - SOS

Age: 11-15

Puberty is an important life phase where changes in the brain and in social connections contribute to adolescents’ developmental trajectory. We wanted to investigate how the functioning of brain networks needed for social processing is associated with endocrine and immune responses to peer social-evaluative stress, and how this relates to depression during adolescence. The SOS study will provide unique and comprehensive insight into how brain and biological development in the context of social stress is associated with risk for adolescent depression in girls. It will fundamentally contribute to early intervention and preventative efforts for depression in adolescent girls.

TAG - Microbiome

Age: 9-13

There’s a lot we can learn about the brain from studying what lives in the gut! 

 There is growing evidence that the microbes in the gut communicate with the brain and play an important role in healthy brain functioning and mental health. We invited adolescents who were part of the TAG study to provide stool samples at their second round of data collection. This will help us characterize neural-gut microbial communication during this sensitive period of pubertal development, and how it relates to symptoms of depression and anxiety in adolescence.

NOD

Age: 18-25

Feeling lonely? You’re not alone. Loneliness is a widespread and significant problem for college-aged adolescents. Feeling lonely is a risk factor for emerging mental health problems. This is a critical time for social support, because lack of social belonging can lead students to leave college. Cognitive and behavioral interventions show promise for decreasing loneliness, and can be widely disseminated through technology. This pilot randomized controlled trial was conducted to examine the initial efficacy, feasibility, and desirability of a smartphone app, Nod, designed to deliver cognitive and behavioral skill-building exercises to reduce loneliness during the transition to college. Click here to learn more!

TAG - Adolescent COVID-19 Experiences

Age: 13-17

To investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on TAG participants’ mental and physical health, as well as social functioning, we sent out rapid-response surveys and collected saliva samples three times over the span of a year (April 2020-May 2021). The data obtained from these questionnaires and saliva samples will provide us with insight into how living through a global pandemic affects adolescent health and well-being.