Courtney Filippi, PhD

The primary objective of my research is to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie early social-emotional development. To do so, I utilize neuroscientific and observational methods, along with longitudinal study designs. My approach harnesses variability, both across children and across time, that is inherent to change as a means of understanding developmental mechanisms. This approach fundamentally targets developmental trajectories to understand the origins of early behavior. I’m driven to understand early brain mechanisms because of the potential for this work to impact early identification and interventions efforts. I’m particularly invested in interventions targeting mothers and their infants as a way of supporting long-term resilience in children.

Much of my ongoing work is focused on delineating neurobehavioral pathways to developing anxiety. Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent psychiatric illness in children and emerge remarkably early. Anxiety symptoms can manifest and be impairing as early as preschool. This means that a child’s developmental trajectory can be profoundly impacted by anxiety—particularly if left untreated. Thus, early identification is critical. Even so, identifying who is at risk for developing anxiety is challenging because the etiology and expression of anxiety are complex and because this complexity emerges in the context of robust developmental changes. As a developmental psychologist, I’m particularly invested in dissecting the ways in which the developmental context is critical to understanding origins of mental illness. To do so, I study how the neurobiology of a child that goes onto to develop anxiety is different from one that does not. 

My research shows that infancy can serve as a unique lens into the origins of anxiety. In line with that of many others, my work shows that infants who exhibit high negative affect and avoidance of novelty are the most at risk for developing anxiety. I’ve also shown that as early as 4-months of age infants who exhibit this risk phenotype exhibit alterations in brain networks responsible for noticing salient things in the environment and controlling their attention. I’ve also showed that this early infant phenotype is associated with changes in brain development across middle childhood. My ongoing work builds on this to better understand how fluctuations in this risk phenotype over infancy may relate to changes in the infant brain. While much of my work has focused on brain-behavior associations, I am also interested in environmental modulators of risk especially those related to parent-child interactions.

Over the years, I have also studied other aspects of emotional behavior (e.g., irritability, self-regulation), infant social cognitive development (i.e., action understanding, theory of mind), and cognitive skills (language, cognitive control). Collectively, this work demonstrates that infant brain and behavior provide key insight into later life outcomes across several domains.