Previous research suggests that children may perform better and regulate emotions more effectively in the presence of a parent than an unfamiliar stranger, a phenomenon known as parental buffering. This reliance may vary with pubertal development and early psychosocial environments. However, existing studies often rely on small, mixed-age samples and provide limited insight into how normative variation in caregiving quality and parental mental health influences children's transition from parental dependence to independent regulation before puberty. In this pre-registered study, we examined children's performance on an emotional go/no-go task under parent-present versus stranger-present conditions in a large sample of 9.5-year-old children (N = 501) from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. In smaller subsamples, we tested whether pubertal stage affected parental effects on performance and whether early maternal caregiving quality and long-term parental distress moderated these effects. We did not find consistent evidence for parental buffering of 9.5-year-olds' performance in either pre-pubertal or pubertal children. However, sensitivity analyses including all trials, with effect sizes resembling those of the main models, suggested that children made fewer errors when a parent (vs. a stranger) was present, consistent with our pre-registered hypotheses. Evidence for moderation by early caregiving quality or parental mental health was minimal. These findings highlight the need for longitudinal, age-specific research on children's reliance on parental presence for emotion regulation and suggest that typical variation in caregiving quality and parental mental health may not substantially influence parental buffering effects in middle childhood.

Scientific research remains disproportionately grounded in data from high-income countries (HICs), yet efforts to map the distribution of neuroimaging findings by income levels remain limited. Using data from the ENIGMA Consortium, we conducted a systematic quantitative synthesis of 83 publications across nine psychiatric and neurological conditions, analyzing T1-weighted structural MRI data from 16,086 cases in 27 countries. Representation was mapped using World Bank income classifications and World Health Organization (WHO) regions. HICs contributed 90.5% of cases; upper-middle-income countries 7.9%; lower-middle-income countries 1.6%; and low-income countries none. Geographically, 85% of cases originated from North America and Europe, while Africa, South-East Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean were underrepresented. Supplemental analyses of other datasets (Brain Growth Charts; fMRI meta-analysis) revealed similar disparities. Equitable neuroimaging science is critical to inform practice and policy decision-making that is context specific. This requires targeted investment in infrastructure, data sharing, and participation from underrepresented regions.

Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) is an impairing sensory processing challenge prevalent across a range of clinical and neurodevelopmental populations, as well as those with experiences of early caregiver-related adversity. Despite its prevalence and impairing nature, little research exists investigating SOR, and its distinct, underlying neural mechanisms, in early caregiver-related adversity. We examined SOR in children and adolescents ages 7–17 years old who were adopted from foster care (AFC; n = 31) and non-adopted comparisons (NAC; n = 26). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated neural activity and functional connectivity in response to mildly aversive auditory and tactile stimulation and its relationship to SOR. The AFC group had elevated SOR scores as well as greater activation in somatosensory cortex compared to NAC. Within the AFC group, those with lower SOR showed increased activation of subcortical (thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus) and cortical (pre- and post-central gyri, and cingulate gyrus) regions. In the AFC group, negative functional-connectivity was observed between prefrontal and sensory regions, across sensory regions, and between sensory regulation and sensory reactivity-related regions. While sensory-evoked activation results suggest that children with early caregiver-related adversity show some hyperactivity to aversive sensory stimulation, consistent with other clinical groups, connectivity analyses suggest additional, unique mechanisms of SOR. Furthermore, functional-connectivity results provide evidence that children with early caregiver-related adversity may develop compensatory mechanisms that contribute to resilience for SOR. Results help explain individual differences in SOR in youth with early caregiver-related adversity and suggest a potential neural basis for some resilience to more severe SOR in these youth.

Increasing evidence for enhanced cognitive flexibility following early-life caregiving unpredictability indicates that developmental adaptations can occur during early sensitive periods of infant development. However, existing research does not clarify the timing of the developmental window during which unpredictability can shape cognitive outcomes. This study tested the developmental uniqueness of early life versus adolescence to ask whether adaptations can also occur related to unpredictability that occurs in adolescence. Using a longitudinal design that uncouples these developmental periods in a sample enriched for early caregiving unpredictability (N = 197, 105 female, Mage = 9.53 years at Visit 1), cognitive flexibility was assessed across two separate visits, along with two other dimensions of executive function (response inhibition and attentional control). As has been previously observed with early unpredictability, unpredictable caregiving in adolescence was associated with improvements in cognitive flexibility independently from early unpredictability. Findings suggest that adaptations are not limited to early life; they may also occur in adolescence, thereby extending the window of human developmental adaptability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

BACKGROUND:Pavlovian reversal learning (RL) is a potential pathway linking childhood trauma (CT) with psychopathology. RL describes the ability to flexibly update associations of stimuli with threat and safety based on changing contextual significance. This study aims to characterize how CT may alter the neural underpinnings of RL in youth in ways relevant to mental health. METHODS:One hundred participants aged 9-19, half with CT (i.e., interpersonal violence) exposure, completed a RL task during an fMRI scan. One previously-neutral stimulus was paired with an aversive stimulus and predicted threat (CS+); another was not and predicted safety (CS-). Then, contingencies were reversed, such that the old safety cue became the new threat cue (New CS+) and vice-versa. Regions-of-interest analyses and nonparametric mediation models with 10,000 simulations were used to examine patterns of neural activation and connectivity and whether they indirectly linked CT with psychopathology. RESULTS:Youth with CT displayed elevated threat RL (New CS+ > New CS-) in amygdala; reduced safety RL (New CS- > New CS+) in canonical safety-learning regions, including ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and posterior parahippocampal gyrus (PHG); and elevated hippocampus-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity during safety RL. Critically, there were indirect effects of CT on transdiagnostic psychopathology through reduced safety RL in hippocampus and PHG, such that trauma-related reductions in discrimination between reversed cues were associated with lower levels of generalized anxiety and panic symptoms, findings driven by associations within the trauma group. CONCLUSIONS:Alterations in RL following CT during this key developmental window may reflect an environmental experience-dependent pathway to resilience.

Emotion differentiation (ED)—the ability to identify specific experienced emotions—is essential for psychological wellbeing. Although ED is theorized to develop through caregiving experiences, contextual effects on ED in developmental populations have rarely been investigated, particularly among youth who have experienced disruptions in early caregiving relationships. To illuminate the development of ED, we explored how adolescents’ momentary emotion differentiation (mED) varies across socio-emotional contexts and whether these patterns differ following exposure to severe caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs). Adolescents (N = 81; ages 10–17) with/without crEAs completed a 7-day ecological momentary assessment (4–5 surveys/day), reporting emotions and social contexts. At the trait level, no significant differences in ED emerged following crEAs after controlling for covariates. Consistent with prior research on community samples, higher anxiety/depression was associated with lower negative trait ED across groups. At the momentary level, negative mED decreased following negative parent-related contexts compared to other contexts. However, the standard deviation of these momentary emotions indicated that negative parental contexts were followed by a phasic intensification restricted to a few negative emotions. Importantly, exposure to crEAs attenuated these contextual effects. These data offer initial investigation for the complex ways in which early disruptions to caregiving relationships may shape adolescents’ emotion differentiation.

Mentalizing—the process of thinking about others’ and one’s own thoughts and feelings—is ubiquitous and consequential. Traditionally, researchers have examined how the brain supports mentalizing. Here, we ask what content knowledge the brain relies on to mentalize. Based on converging evidence from developmental, cognitive, and social-affective neurosciences, we suggest that the socio-affective knowledge gained from early attachment relationships provide the basis for such content knowledge. Moreover, we suggest that this attachment relationship-generated schematized knowledge is represented in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and accessed during mentalizing. In this article, we (i) describe mPFC activity during early caregiving experiences to demonstrate its encoding of the affective meaning of parent-child interaction episodes; (ii) extrapolate from research on memory consolidation in the cognitive neurosciences to propose how regularities across parent-child interactions become abstracted into an attachment schema in the mPFC; (iii) discuss the functionality of mPFC-coordinated representations of attachment schemas for predicting the social world. Long recognized by attachment theory, our integrative perspective prompts researchers to neuroscientifically examine whether the social relationship with one’s caregiver builds attachment knowledge that in turns forms the basis for mentalizing.

Early caregiving experiences have strong, persistent links to emotion regulation. In this article we offer a view that the content represented in emotion-regulation neurobiology in part reflects consolidated interpersonal-affective memories abstracted from early caregiving experiences. We suggest that these interpersonal-affective memories, referred to here as "attachment schemas," are represented by cortical-subcortical (re)activations. Neural circuitry involving functional connections between subcortical and midline cortical regions is well positioned to generate predictive inferences from attachment schemas that have implications for emotion regulation. Although speculative, this perspective is motivated by the convergence of empirical findings from cognitive and developmental neuroscience. Situating affective neural predictions within a neurodevelopmental framework has great potential to uncover mechanisms of attachment and ultimately build toward a more complete understanding of the links between early caregiving experiences and emotional well-being.

There are individual differences in how people respond to emotionally ambiguous cues (i.e., valence bias), which have important consequences for mental health, development, and social functioning, yet how these differences develop in childhood and adolescence is unknown. Extensive literature shows that children's cognitive biases, including appraisals in uncertain situations, can be influenced by parents. The current study collected valence bias from parent and child dyads (n = 136, children ages 6-17 years, M = 10.92, SD = 3.22) using a dual-valence ambiguity task (i.e., the valence bias task). Using structural equation modeling, we found that a child's valence bias was associated with their parent's valence bias (β = 0.283, p = 0.005). We also explored the effect of parent-child attachment in three facets (communication, alienation, and trust) on this intergenerational transmission. Communication moderated the relationship between parent and child valence bias, such that higher communication led to a stronger relationship between parent and child valence bias (β = 0.03, p = 0.04). These findings suggest that one mechanism that supports valence bias development is the parent's bias, and this may be uniquely influenced by the degree of parent-child communication. This tendency to similarly interpret ambiguous stimuli may result from social learning. Specifically, our results support a theory of generalized shared reality where parents and children who have a greater interpersonal connection (i.e., communication) also share a more similar world view (i.e., valence bias). A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlSDxFDmP7g SUMMARY: Valence bias represents variability in appraisals of emotional ambiguity, with some people showing greater negativity, and others more positive. There is evidence of intergenerational transmission of valence bias, such that children tend to have a bias that mirrors their parents. Transmission was moderated by parent-child attachment, such that children that report greater communication with their parent show a more similar bias to their parent. These findings are discussed in the context of theories on development and generalized shared realities.

Schematized knowledge structures have been extensively studied in the cognitive domain, and yet the nature of affective schemas remains an uncharted area, with experimental work virtually nonexistent. Here, we examined how affective schemas are acquired, updated, and used for inference-making using three novel experimental paradigms. We show that affective schemas emerge by abstracting a common affective value from a distribution of unique affective associations. This common abstracted affective value semanticizes from the discrete exemplars into complex, valenced schemas (negative, positive, neutral), which consolidates across a 24-hr period. Valenced schemas (negative/positive) form faster than neutral schemas, resist affective reversals more strongly, and facilitate rapid learning and memory for related emotional information. Negative-valenced schemas, in particular, are most prioritized for learning, show greater resilience to change, and are more effective in supporting generalized (gist-based) inferences. This work defines key features of affective schemas, moving the study of emotional learning and memory systems from the conditioning of specific associations to the abstraction and consolidation of complex emotional knowledge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Background: In this study, we investigated the sustained causal effects of enhanced early caregiving quality on adolescent brain network properties approximately 11 years after families received an attachment-based parenting intervention. Methods: Participants included 60 adolescents whose parents were referred by Child Protective Services (CPS) because of risk for child maltreatment and 35 adolescents from families without a CPS history (total N = 95). CPS-involved families were randomly assigned to either the target intervention (Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up [ABC]) (n = 31) or a control intervention (Developmental Education for Families [DEF]) (n = 29) before the infants turned 2. During adolescence (meanage = 13.4 years, SD = 0.37), participants underwent a 6-minute resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Results: Graph-theoretical analyses were completed with intervention status as the group-level predictor of interest. Adolescents who received the ABC intervention exhibited distinct global and local network properties compared with the DEF group. The ABC group demonstrated lower current-flow global efficiency and more hierarchical structure, indicating intervention-driven modulation of connectome-wide neurodevelopmental outcomes. Node-specific analyses also indicated intervention effects on clustering coefficients and communicability distances in frontal, limbic, and parietal cortices, suggesting nuanced effects of early interventions on local network properties. Exploratory moderation analyses revealed associations between brain network metrics and externalizing symptoms in the DEF group—indicative of neurobiological risk—that were absent in the ABC and low-risk groups. Conclusions: The results suggest that the ABC intervention causally shapes the development of the resting-state connectome and associated regulatory health, offering insights into the neural pathways through which early enhanced care may get under the skin of at-risk adolescents.

Mental disorders are increasingly understood as disorders of brain development. Large and heterogeneous samples are required to define generalizable links between brain development and psychopathology. To this end, we introduce Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC), an open resource that integrates data from 5 large studies of brain development in youth from three continents (N = 6,346). Bifactor models were used to create harmonized psychiatric phenotypes, capturing major dimensions of psychopathology. Following rigorous quality assurance, neuroimaging data were carefully curated and processed using consistent pipelines in a reproducible manner. Initial analyses of RBC emphasize the benefit of careful quality assurance and data harmonization in delineating developmental effects and associations with psychopathology. Critically, all RBC data-including harmonized psychiatric phenotypes, unprocessed images, and fully processed imaging derivatives-are openly shared without a data use agreement via the International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative. Together, RBC facilitates large-scale, reproducible, and generalizable research in developmental and psychiatric neuroscience.

Understanding the neurobiology of resilient emotion regulation following adversities is critical for addressing mental health problems globally. However, the functional neurobiology of resilience has rarely been studied in low- and middleincome countries, which comprise 90% of the world's population and experience more consistent adversities. Here, we describe how we are investigating the neurodevelopment of resilient emotion regulation in adolescents (anticipated N = 525) from a South African birth cohort recruited from a low-income, high-adversity township. Across 2 longitudinal time points (13-14 and 15-16 years), magnetic resonance imaging, behavior, and self-report measures from adolescents and their caregivers are collected. These data are complemented by existing developmental histories (from the prenatal period to 8 years). The culturally adapted measures, protocols, and analytic plans for investigating resilient emotion regulation are presented. By characterizing neurodevelopmental correlates of adolescent resilience from an understudied low- and middle-income country, this research will provide deeper insights into mental health globally.

Developmental and experiential heterogeneity associated with caregiving-related early adversities (crEAs) poses a major challenge to identifying replicable, generalizable findings. Here conditional random forests evaluated the importance of unique crEA experiences for estimating risks to mental health in 306 children, 6–12 years of age, with heterogeneous crEA experiences (different forms of caregiver-involved abuse and/or neglect or permanent/substantial parent–child separation). The better that crEAs improved the accuracy of symptom estimates in held-out, never-before-seen children, the more important and generalizable they were considered. Here we show that earlier timing and longer duration of crEAs was especially important for elevated general psychopathology (p-factor scores). The mere presence (versus absence) of crEAs was more valuable for estimating symptom risk than were specific adversities in a broad sample. Specific adversities became more important when only looking within the crEA-exposed subsample, with adversities of an interpersonal-affective nature being the most likely to increase transdiagnostic symptom risk. Concurrent consistent caregiving also had high importance, motivating consideration of later-occurring environmental experiences in future studies of early adversity. Using a machine learning approach to improve risk estimates across heterogeneous samples, the authors demonstrate patterns of increased transdiagnostic symptom risk in children who have experienced caregiving-related early adversities.

Aberrant reward processing is common in psychiatric disorders that begin during development. However, our understanding of the early reward system is limited, due to few studies assessing reward engagement across development. Moreover, the interpretation of these findings is based primarily on our understanding of the adult reward system. Here, we argue that approaches to early reward processing must be re-framed within the context of developmental transitions. This alternate perspective takes into account unique, age-specific brain network functions that promote adaptive behaviors as environmental demands change from infancy through childhood. We survey the literature on developing reward systems and ask the following critical questions: (1) how are rewarding stimuli defined for infants and children? (2) do adult-defined neural reward circuits also support early reward behavior? and (3) how can early circuit perturbation impact infant and adult circuit function? Altogether, we argue that this developmental niche-centered framework is needed for conceptually and theoretically approaching developmental research questions, including but also extending beyond the scope of reward. Finally, this framework can help us understand how disturbance in developmental processes may ultimately manifest as pathology.

Childhood abuse is associated with neuro-developmental disruption, including heightened threat sensitivity. It is often assumed that this disruption is semi-permanent and resistant to change. Here we examine whether the exaggerated threat response seen in adolescents who have experienced past abuse was modified after a 7-month stay in a trauma-informed residential program. The sample included thirty-six adolescents who were placed into residential care and had either prior exposure to high levels of abuse (n = 36) or lower levels of abuse (n = 25). Groups (aged 12.7-18.9 years, 57 male) were matched on age, sex, IQ, and prescribed medications and were scanned twice (shortly after intake and after 7 months) on a looming threat task. Results indicated (i) trauma-informed residential care was associated with significant decline in depression, anxiety, aggression, and callous-unemotional trait symptoms irrespective of severity of prior abuse exposure; (ii) Participants who had been subjected to high levels of abuse showed heightened neural responsiveness to threats in both the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus and the amygdala/hippocampus at intake that reduced after 7 months; (iii) Both groups showed declines in responsiveness within the rostromedial frontal cortex and the lingual gyrus and fusiform cortex after a 7-month treatment. These data demonstrate that intervention can ameliorate heightened neural threat responsiveness and symptom severity in adolescents who have been exposed to high levels of abuse.

This study presents an interaction-centric framework for analytically investigating brain-to-brain dynamics during eye contact, advancing beyond the traditional spectator model. The foundation of the interactor approach is to delineate the interaction. To achieve this, simultaneous brain activity engaged in eye contact was captured using hyperscanning fMRI. The BOLD responses were first divided into eye-to-eye reciprocal interaction and eye-to-face non-reciprocal communication based on the experimental design; then the reciprocal interaction response was further differentiated into sensory-based (exogenous) and mind-based (endogenous) components to characterize agentic interaction. The proposed interactor approach not only determines interaction from dyadic brain states but also computes emergent interactive brain states arising from the interaction. To achieve these, reciprocal interactive fMRI responses were quantified into an interaction matrix, from which interaction-induced communication channels were identified using Correspondence Analysis, and information flow within those channels was measured with Mutual Information. The advantage of the interactor approach is its ability to reveal emergent dyadic brain states that a spectator approach cannot fully unravel. When applied to parent-child eye contact, this method confirmed existing developmental findings, clarified previous inconsistencies, and uncovered new insights into how reciprocal social engagement shapes brain function.

The hippocampus supports episodic memories in development, and yet how the brain stabilizes these memories determines their long-term accessibility. This study examined how episodic memories formed in development are stabilized and whether early-life experiences influence the neural mechanisms involved. Using fMRI and multivariate analyses, we tracked neural reinstatement of newly learned item-location-context associations in youth (N = 49; age mean = 11.68 years). Hippocampus and visual cortex activity during encoding predicted later memory success. Crucially, spontaneous reinstatement in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during post-encoding rest also predicted memory. In a second sample (N = 32, age mean = 12.86 years) with early adversity, differential recruitment of the precuneus and visual cortex during encoding, and angular gyrus during reinstatement, was observed. These findings suggest that hippocampus and mPFC contribute to developmental memory stabilization in ways consistent with mature function, while differences in memory accessibility across developmental experiences arise from broader network adaptations.