Event

Part of the BCTR’s Talks at Twelve series.

Context matters. Our physical and social affordances shape our brains and behaviors to produce individual brain differences that may also lead to risk and resilience for health issues. Understanding our brains and the way that our resources and choices impact them is therefore an essential part of public health and equity. Gonzalez will briefly present some research on the impact of developmental context on the brain and introduce the Community Neuroscience Initiative (CNI). The CNI is a new project from the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, which aims to democratize neuroscience, facilitate translation through community-based participatory research, and not just destigmatize but embrace neurodiversity. The ultimate goal is to empower community members to make choices to suit their goals.

Gonzalez is originally from the Dominican Republic but spent most of her life in New York City and Connecticut. In 2018, Gonzalez completed her clinical psychology internship and received a degree in psychology from the University of Virginia. The overarching theme of her research is how developmental context (its physical and social affordances) shapes our brains into their adult form. Gonzalez conceives of development as likened to clay being placed in a mold to achieve a shape that is suited to that mold. Our genes are the clay, they mold our environments, and the produced form is our phenotypes. But what if our adult environment is far different from the one that molded us? Are some of us made of more pliable or stiffer clay than others? What specific parts of our developmental context help neural plasticity and to what end? Up until now Gonzalez’s work has indicated that neighborhood quality in adolescence and lower economic privilege coincide with increased neural vigilance and reward sensitivity, but these effects are moderated by molecular differences in the Oxytocin Receptor Gene — a gene deeply involved in our social development. Future work will apply these and new models using Life History Theory to predict specific neural phenotypes and health outcomes.