Recent research delineates developmental pathways to mood and anxiety disorders. Among preschool children, prospective and family-based studies suggest that early risk and resilience may be linked to individual differences in temperament or other behavioral characteristics such as risk-intolerance/risk-seeking. The proposal uses fMRI to examine PFC, cingulate cortex, amygdala, and striatal function as well as resting state, in two groups of individuals, (1) temperamentally classified, i.e., individuals previously classified with a state-of-the-art temperament battery and followed prospectively into early adulthood, and (2) classified by patterns of risk behavior and anxiety trait, i.e., individuals classified by level of trait anxiety and propensity for risk-taking behavior.

A total of 980 children will be studied as adolescents and young adults (7-25 years old). The selection of participants for the temperament part of the study will be based on features that were identified during assessments at UMD in the distant past, when the participants were infants and toddlers. Minors can continue to participate after they become adults, and will be re-consented at their first visit after reaching age 18 with the adult volunteer consent form. The pool of participants for the risk behavior part of the study are children, adolescents and young adults recruited from both the community and a cohort of children and adolescents followed at the University of Maryland College Park. Assessments will include psychiatric, behavioral, and neuropsychological batteries. The protocol uses fMRI paradigms previously developed for studies of adolescents or targeting specific processes such as attention, learning and conditioning, social information, motivation, or perception.

The temperament part of the study tests three hypotheses related to inhibited temperament. First, behaviorally inhibited adolescents are hypothesized to exhibit enhanced amygdala activation when exposed to mild threats in the form of facial emotion displays. Second, behaviorally inhibited adolescents are hypothesized to exhibit reduced activation of the PFC and cingulate while attending to emotion vs. physical features present in facial threats. Third, exuberant adolescents are hypothesized to exhibit enhanced activation of striatum and inferior PFC during the presentation of reward stimuli.

For the risk/anxiety part of the study, an additional set of hypotheses related to trait anxiety and risk-taking will be tested. First, anxious adolescents/young adults will activate striatal regions in response to reward more strongly than non-anxious adolescents/young adults. Second, risk-takers will also activate striatal regions in response to reward more strongly than non-risk taking adolescents. Third, we expect an interaction between risk-taking and anxious factors.

Finally, participants will be asked to come back and repeat scanning studies to (1) evaluate the stability of the findings, (2) assess developmental changes, or (3) test additional paradigms.