Modeling Individual Differences in Brain Development

Abstract

Half of all lifetime mental health disorders have their onset by the mid-teens (1,2). A major goal of neurodevelopmental research has been to understand how the brain develops in individuals who are diagnosed with mental health disorders, and to use this information for prevention and prediction efforts (3). Much work has been motivated by the premise that identifying atypical patterns of brain development in individuals diagnosed with mental health disorders will uncover the biological processes underlying these disorders (4,5). Further, through knowing when these deviations in brain development occur, researchers might identify the optimal window of opportunity during development when interventions are likely to be most effective, or target intervention efforts for processes that are changing most during these periods of development. Indeed, there is increasing interest in using information about an individual’s brain development to predict mental health outcomes, and to understand what individual or social environmental factors impact the brain’s development in a way that might increase the risk for developing a mental health disorder. To reach these goals, we must shift from a focus on group-level models of brain development to approaches that characterize the heterogeneity that is present between individuals within the developing brain. Thus, with the term “heterogeneity” we refer to individual differences in developmental trajectories of the brain. The main goals of this nonexhaustive review are to 1) highlight empirical longitudinal neuroimaging studies that have moved beyond group-level estimates, using methods that may aid in our understanding why some individuals develop mental health disorders whereas others do not, and 2) provide methodological recommendations for future studies interested in characterizing individual differences in patterns of brain development.