Key Findings
- Neural circuitry of anxiety and fear responses change substantially during childhood and adolescence
- Early life adversity and trauma can influence this development
- Caregivers are critical to adaptive learning of emotion regulation strategies
- Parent-based therapy can effectively treat child anxiety
Substantial changes in the brain underlie the dramatic behavioral development that occurs throughout childhood and adolescence. Environmental factors that affect this development have critical implications for key outcomes, such as risk for mental health disorders. To recognize her pioneering work in this area, FABBS is delighted to honor Dr. Dylan Gee as an early career award winner. Dr. Gee received her award at the annual meeting of the Flux Society for Developmental Neuroscience, her nominating society, on September 28 in Baltimore.
Dr. Gee earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She is a leading researcher on the development of the brain’s neural circuitry and emotions in childhood and adolescence, with a particular focus on how early experiences alter this development. She is also an active member of the Flux Society for Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, her nominating society. Dr. Gee recently spoke with FABBS about her research and its importance for child mental health.
Dr. Gee’s interests developed as an undergraduate student studying psychology at Dartmouth College, where she served as a mentor for children living in under-resourced communities through an organization called DREAM. Combining her education with this life experience, Dr. Gee began to wonder about how different youth could experience significant adversity but varying mental health. Noticing that some youth were struggling while others were thriving, Dr. Gee wondered how both adverse and positive experiences might influence brain development and mental health.
Dr. Gee now answers this question through her lab’s research, largely funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. She specifically studies how early life adversity affects circuitry between brain regions associated with emotions, learning, and other higher-level processes. Her research methods include bringing in children and adolescents to perform behavioral tasks and undergo functional MRI (fMRI) scans.
Her foundational work has shown that connections between the amygdala, a brain region implicated in experiencing fear and anxiety, and the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in regulating emotion, change significantly as children age. This development is likely related to improvements in emotion regulation as children age, a critical skill needed to respond to anxiety or adverse experiences. Dr. Gee has further found that traumatic events can change how this circuitry develops in ways that may help to cope with stress in the short-term but have longer-term consequences for mental health. These findings have suggested early adversity increases risk for mental health challenges and alters neural circuitry as children adapt to their environments.
Furthermore, these findings underscore the importance of caregivers for the development of healthy emotional regulation strategies. Dr. Gee noted that the presence of a supportive caregiver is one of the strongest predictors of well-being following trauma exposure. Conversely, children with less support and fewer resources are at greater risk for disorders including clinical anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, highlighting the need for increased resources for families and for structural changes that reduce trauma.
Dr. Gee’s work has been central to several policy briefs aimed at increasing resources for prevention of and resilience toward childhood traumas. In one salient example, Dr. Gee’s research on the impact of caregiving adversity informed policymakers of the risk of family separation practices at the US-Mexico border. Her research, and that of other developmental scientists, was critical to a judicial decision in a class action lawsuit that ruled that migrant families who were separated must be provided mental healthcare by the US government.
Recently, Dr. Gee has been expanding her research with the goal of improving healthy emotion regulation, resilience, and even anxiety treatment outcomes in youth. One key finding was that, when children’s emotion regulation circuitry is still immature, the presence of a caregiver can reduce amygdala reactivity and provides safety cues to reduce child fear and anxiety.
Dr. Gee translated this discovery by collaborating to test a novel therapy approach for treating child anxiety by focusing on reducing parent accommodation behaviors. Dr. Gee found that the novel parent-based treatment was equally effective as gold-standard cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) methods in treating child anxiety, and was associated with changes in child neural circuitry involving the amygdala. Dr. Gee’s future goals include identifying which children would preferentially benefit from parent-based therapy or child-based CBT to improve treatment outcomes.
Beyond this crucial work, Dr. Gee is deeply committed to her local and broader communities. Her lab frequently conducts outreach events in New Haven, where they focus on communicating their science of the importance of children’s environments for the development of emotion regulation and mental health. Additionally, they teach about the adaptiveness of stress responses to increase resilience to adversity and trauma. She also hopes to improve access to science careers with efforts such as mentoring and bringing children to visit her lab and to see how fMRI scans work.
Overall, Dr. Gee’s research has greatly improved understanding of childhood brain development and how early life adversity affects this development and mental health. Her research has important societal implications, including resource allocation for prevention of childhood traumas and teaching resilience, policies affecting children and their environments, and anxiety treatment outcomes. The scientific community and broader community is very fortunate to have Dr. Gee’s expertise. FABBS is thrilled to name her an early career award winner.
Potential for Future Impact
- Increasing resources for preventing trauma and increasing resilience
- Policy changes and parental education to improve development of emotion regulation strategies and mental health
- Improvement of anxiety treatment outcomes based on child-specific factors
