Special BIC Lecture: Charting Cortical Axes of Plasticity

Charting Cortical Axes of Plasticity and Environmental Sensitivity: From Animal Critical Periods to Human Development

Abstract: The human cerebral cortex exhibits a multi-decade maturational time course during which it retains an innate capacity for environment-driven plasticity. Elucidating how plasticity is refined in the cortex over time is foundational to understanding when the youth brain will be most vulnerable to negative environments—as well as most amenable to positive environments capable of supporting healthy development and fostering resiliency. Yet, it remains unclear precisely how plasticity unfolds in the child and adolescent brain, in part due to the challenge of studying developmental plasticity in vivo. In this talk, I will describe how multi-modal MRI can be harnessed to study functional and neurobiological hallmarks of critical period plasticity that have been identified in animal research, including age-related changes in intrinsic activity, thalamocortical connectivity, and intracortical myelination. I will then demonstrate that developmental refinements in imaging correlates of critical period neurobiology progress along a sensorimotor-to-association axis across cortical regions and a deep-to-superficial axis across cortical layers. Next, I will provide evidence that the organization of developmental plasticity along these cortical axes influences when and where socioeconomic environmental influences become embedded in the brain. The talk will conclude by considering how progress in studying developmental plasticity may help to inform the type and timing of environmental enrichment interventions for youth at risk for psychopathology.

Bio: Valerie Sydnor is a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh working in the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development with Beatriz Luna. Valerie completed her undergraduate degree in Health and Human Biology at Brown University and received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research program investigates when during development different areas of the human cortex are most plastic—and therefore most sensitive to environmental exposures that confer either vulnerability or resiliency to psychopathology. Thus far in her research career, Valerie has published 48 peer-reviewed articles (13 first-author) and received continuous external funding to support her work over an 8-year period. Outside of the lab, Valerie is an avid runner as well as an avid consumer of fantasy novels, sunshine, and donuts.

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