Developmental Psychobiology of Stress in Children

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is an application for a Senior Scientist Award (K05) for Megan R. Gunnar. The award is requested to sustain Dr. Gunnar's continuing efforts to produce independent research and to enter into multi-disciplinary, integrative collaborations designed to foster our understanding of stress and its role in human development. Dr. Gunnar is one of the pioneers of stress physiology-behavior research in human development with 100+ publications on this topic. She is a chaired professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, a world-renowned site for research on human development. Both in the Institute and through participation in multi-disciplinary centers at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Gunnar has access to a vibrant and rich environment to support her career development. Her career has been characterized by increasing integration of the literature on and methods of studying cortisol-behavior relations, with the literature and methods in the study of psychophysiological, neuroscience, and clinical/high-risk children. During this award period, she will focus on developing skills in several domains relevant to our understanding of stress and its effects early in life. These include: measurement of sleep, assessment of cognitive/emotional processes supported by prefrontal-limbic circuits, and epidemiologically-sensitive, prevention/intervention research theory and methods. She will also administer 2 large, currently funded, NIMH individual research grants and devote time to directing an NIMH-funded, multidisciplinary, multi-site network designed to foster translation of the animal research on stress neurobiology and early experience to prevention/intervention research with high-risk human populations. The preparatory work currently underway to guide the development of a multi-site ROl on orphanage-adopted children is also described. Finally, Dr. Gunnar will continue to devote roughly 25% of her time to science education and advocacy. These latter activities include mentoring of postdoctoral, doctoral, and undergraduate students, graduate-level teaching, participation in activities that follow-up on her role in the National Academy of Science panel that produced Neurons to Neighborhoods participation in organizations such as Zero to Three whose missions are to "give child development information away" for use by practitioners, parents, and policy makers.