Biography

Ron Dahl is a pediatrician and developmental scientist with long history of commitment to interdisciplinary team research. He serves as the Director, Institute of Human Development, and Professor, School of Public Health at UC Berkeley; and Professor, UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. He has published more than 250 scientific articles in the areas of child and adolescent development, behavioral/emotional health in youth, sleep and its disorders in youth, adolescent brain development, and the public health/policy implications of this work. Most recently, he has helped to establish The Center on the Developing Adolescent, a transdisciplinary research center founded on the recognition that adolescence represents a maturational period of great vulnerabilities and opportunities—with lifelong impact on health, education, well-being, and social as well as economic success. He is currently serving as President of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Katie McLaughlin is a clinical psychologist with interests in how environmental experience shapes emotional, cognitive, and neurobiological development throughout childhood and adolescence. Her research uncovers specific developmental processes that are disrupted by adverse environmental experiences early in life and determines how those disruptions increase risk for mental health problems in children and adolescents. Understanding these mechanisms is critical for the development of interventions to prevent the onset of psychopathology in children who experience adversity. She is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington and principal investigator at the Stress & Development Lab.

3-146 - A Social Neuroscience Perspective on Adolescent Learning and Adaptation

Session Type: Invited Symposium

Integrative Statement

Adolescence is a period of dynamic change, learning, and adaptation. This symposium provides a social neuroscience perspective on these changes. In the first talk, Wouter Van den Bos will present behavioral, neuro-scientific and computational modeling evidence of adolescent changes in basic learning mechanisms and how these are modulated by social context. These results suggest that adolescence may indeed be a sensitive period for social learning. In the second presentation, Kate McLaughlin will present evidence for adolescence as a time of risk and resilience following early adverse social experiences. She will focus on threat and reward learning mechanisms. Her work has shown how adverse social experiences occurring early in child development influence emotional processing and the neural circuitry and she will describe how maturational changes in adolescence may create a second window of threat and reward learning—in ways that may create additional risk or resilience for developing psychopathology. The discussion will consider the growing evidence suggesting that adolescence is a window of specialized learning (social and affective) in ways that create vulnerabilities and opportunities for a broad range of outcomes.

Sub Unit

• Invited Program on Neuroscience & Child Development

Chair

• Ronald E. Dahl, University of California, Berkeley

Discussant

• Ronald E. Dahl, University of California, Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Development of Adaptive Social Behavior in Adolescence - Presenting Author: Wouter van den Bos, Max Planck Institute for Human Development

• Adolescence as a Time of Risk and Resilience Following Early Adverse Social Experiences: Threat and Reward Learning Mechanisms - Presenting Author: Katie McLaughlin, University of Washington