College of Arts and Sciences

Department of Psychological Science

Alexis Brieant,she/her (Developmental)

Assistant Professor

Research and/or Creative Works

My program of research examines how adversity and social determinants of health shape neurodevelopment and mental health across childhood and adolescence. I integrate perspectives from developmental science, clinical psychology, and neuroscience to better understand the nuanced ways in which adversity and environmental stressors can affect youth development. The overarching aim of my program of research is to identify factors that exacerbate risk or promote resilience in youth in order to inform targets for intervention and prevention and mitigate disparities in youth mental health.

My lab, the Family, Environment, Resilience, and Neurodevelopment (FERN) Lab, leverages a variety of methodologies across multiple levels of analysis including behavioral and cognitive tasks, neuroimaging (fMRI), and detailed assessments of early environments. We utilize rigorous quantitative methods, primarily in a structural equation modeling framework, to answer complex questions about the dynamic nature of behavior and neurodevelopment. Ongoing and future research plans include 1) examining how intersecting social determinants of health and adversity exposure shape brain and behavioral development across childhood and adolescence, 2) delineating the neurodevelopmental mechanisms and trajectories that link these experiences with mental health, and 3) identifying factors that contribute to youth adaptation and resilience.

Publications

Recent Publications

Holt-Gosselin, B., Keding, T.J., Poulin, R., Brieant, A., Rueter, A., Hendrickson, T.J., Perrone, A., Byington, N., Houghton, A., Miranda-Dominguez, O., Feczko, E., Fair, D., Joormann, J., & Gee, D.G. (in press). Neural circuit markers of familial risk for depression among healthy youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.05.001

Brieant, A., Vannucci, A., Nakua, H., Harris, J., Lovell, J., Brundavanam, D., Tottenham, N., & Gee, D.G. (2023). Characterizing the dimensional structure of early life adversity in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 61, 101256. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101256

Kim-Spoon, J., Lee, T., Clinchard, C., Lindenmuth, M., Brieant, A., Steinberg, L., Deater-Deckard, K., & Casas, B. (2023). Brain similarity as a protective factor in the longitudinal pathway linking household chaos, parenting, and substance use. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.04.008

Herd, T., Jacques, K., Brieant, A., Noll, J., King-Casas, B., & Kim-Spoon, J. (2023). Parenting, emotion regulation, and externalizing symptomatology as adolescent antecedents to young adult health risk behaviors. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 33, 632-640. doi:10.1111/jora.12831

Brieant, A., Clinchard, C., Deater-Deckard, K., Lee, J., King-Casas, B., & Kim-Spoon, J. (2022). Differential associations of adversity profiles with adolescent cognitive control and psychopathology. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. doi:10.1007/s10802-022-00972-8

Foster*, J.C., Cohodes*, E.M., Brieant, A., McCauley, S., Odriozola, P., Zacharek, S.J., Pierre, J.C., Hodges, H.R., Kribakaran, S., Haberman, J.T., Holt-Gosselin, B., Gee, D.G. (2022). Associations between early-life stress exposure and internalizing symptomatology during the COVID-19 pandemic: Assessing the role of neurobehavioral mediators. Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2022.07.006

Brieant, A., King-Casas, B., & Kim-Spoon, J. (2022). Transactional relations between developmental trajectories of executive functioning and internalizing and externalizing symptomatology in adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 34, 213-224. doi:10.1017/S0954579420001054