The mission and vision of the Behavioral Determinants and Developmental Imaging Group is to understand determinants of behavior and behavioral changes occurring during development using its unique nonhuman primate (NHP) and normative and clinical populations. Novel in vivo structural and functional imaging methods will be developed and applied to provide correlative information to assist in addressing these processes and potentially provide translational methods for assessing salient changes in the developing brain. In collaboration with the Perinatal and Obstetrical Group, we plan to develop new imaging tools to scan pregnant mothers and children from the fetal period to young adulthood and to coordinate resulting insights in brain development with parallel studies of the ontogeny of cognition, emotion, and behavior. With the Neurosciences Group, we plan to study possible neuroanatomical sequelae of plasticity and learning in these populations.
We seek greater understanding in the identification of quantitative in vivo imaging biomarkers for salient functional or structural changes in the brain associated with cognitive and emotional behavior or cognitive changes or abnormalities that could be used clinically or as enabling technologies in the neurosciences. We also seek to better integrate and correlate imaging (i.e., radiological) changes in the developing brain and gene expression changes in human and NHP populations.