Division of Developmental Translational Research (DDTR)
Overview
The Division of Developmental Translational Research supports programs of research and research training with the ultimate goal of preventing and curing childhood psychopathology. The Division stimulates and promotes an integrated program of research across basic behavioral/psychological processes, environmental processes, brain development, pediatric psychopathology and therapeutic interventions. DDTR supports research that employs a developmental perspective on a variety of related basic behavioral processes and the psychopathology that arises from their dysfunction. These efforts to translate knowledge from basic research to a new understanding of clinical disorders share the goal of developing novel treatment and prevention strategies.
Division Supported Research
- Focus on developmental processes and transitions from the prenatal period through adolescence, including both psychosocial and neurobehavioral processes responsible for sex differences in childhood mental disorders.
- Emphasis on studies with human subjects. Limited research with animals is included for studies that model aspects of developmental psychopathology.
- Support of research on normative, at-risk, and clinical populations to elucidate cognitive, emotional, personality, social, and biobehavioral processes relevant to understanding, preventing, and treating childhood mental disorders.
- Inclusion of behavioral-genetic and neurodevelopmental (e.g., neuroimaging, neuroendocrine) approaches to elucidate the interplay of biological and environmental factors relevant to childhood psychopathology and to identify behavioral and biological markers of vulnerability or resilience.
- Research on the efficacy of novel psychosocial and pharmacological preventive and therapeutic interventions, prediction of differential treatment response (e.g., via biomarkers), and research on the behavioral, biological, and environmental mechanisms of preventive and treatment interventions.
Areas of High Priority
- Delineate mechanisms and processes of neurobehavioral development relevant to understanding pediatric mental disorders with a focus on periods of rapid neurobiological change (e.g., infancy, preschool, adolescent periods), during which the brain is particularly sensitive to contextual influence.
- Identify psychosocial and neurobiological mechanisms underlying sex differences in, and gender influences on, pediatric mental disorders.
- Develop, test, and validate biologically based markers (e.g., genetic, proteomic, imaging) for diagnosing or detecting risk/vulnerability, onset, progress, and/or severity of pediatric mental disorders.
- Improve the phenotypic characterization of pediatric mental disorders and refine standardized behavioral assessment tools that are sensitive to developmental change, cultural diversity, and variation in functioning.
- Identify mechanisms and processes (genetic, biological, behavioral, and/or environmental) that confer risk for or protection from childhood psychopathology.
- Develop novel therapies for serious mental disorders of childhood and adolescence.
Director
Mary Ellen Oliveri, Ph.D.
6001 Executive Boulevard, Room 6196, MSC 9617
301-443-5944, moliver1@mail.nih.gov
Deputy Director
Kathleen C. Anderson, Ph.D.
6001 Executive Boulevard. Room. 6189, MSC 9617
301-443-5944, kanders1@mail.nih.gov
