Rebecca Pollard
Hello, my name is Rebecca Pollard I am a PhD student at King’s College London. My poster for SIRS 2025 includes some data investigating differences in task-based neural activation between resilient and maladaptive adolescents who have been exposed to Early Life Adversity.
The problem that I’m trying to solve with my research is that Early Life Adversity (ELA) is a significant health risk, associated with multiple negative outcomes including an increased risk of psychopathology symptoms such as anxiety, depression or psychosis. It is estimated that up to 30% of individuals are exposed to ELA during childhood, and due to the risk that this confers to health, this makes the overall risk conferred by ELA exposure quite significant.
Despite the prevalence of ELA and the risk we know that it confers to our mental health, we don't yet fully understand the biological mechanisms behind the association between ELA and psychopathology. Some individuals maintain good functioning following ELA exposure, and we call this ‘resilience’, we don’t yet fully understand what biological mechanisms are associated with resilience or susceptibility following ELA.
Additionally, we know that symptoms of psychopathology often start to emerge during adolescence. Adolescence is also a key period of both neurobiological development, but also social development where coping strategies and resilience can be built. This makes it a key time for mental health interventions to be delivered and highlights the importance of identifying biological mechanisms of risk and resilience as they begin to take shape during adolescence.
A potential solution is that research has indicated potential differences in neurological functioning between resilient and susceptible individuals. The regions that seem to show these differences the most are prefrontal and limbic system regions which are associated with neurological functions like emotion regulation, reward sensitivity, and affective/fear learning. This points to a potential mechanism of resilience following ELA. However, research so far has largely been conducted on adult populations with cross-sectional design, preventing the understanding of how these systems start to take shape throughout adolescence, and how this differs between resilient and susceptible. My research focusses on neurobiological correlates of resilience in early adolescence to help elucidate how these mechanisms differ during development.
Elucidating the trajectories of neurobiological functioning in these regions and how they differ between resilient and susceptible individuals could help us to understand which systems are key for developing resilience following different types of adversity exposure. This understanding could help inform interventions for individuals exposed to ELA, help to develop resilience, ultimately improving their mental health and well-being.
Thank you for listening and I hope to see you at my poster on Tuesday.
