Our Members

Daniel Keating, Ph.D., manages research programs focused on discovering core, modifiable factors that lead to disparities in health and development from the prenatal period through emerging adulthood. This entails both “drilling down” to understand central biodevelopmental mechanisms, and “ramping up” to understand population patterns and societal structures that contribute to developmental health. The first program of research (funding from NICHD, Keating PI) focuses on adolescent cognitive, behavioral, and brain development, including neurocognitive and neuroimaging methods, aimed at understanding the neurodevelopmental pathways in adolescent and early adult health risk behavior (AHRB). A targeted subsample of this group (high and average risk-takers) is also participating in a longitudinal neuroimaging study (fMRI, DTI, resting state, and EEG/ERP), with two waves. We are pursuing multiple avenues of investigation with existing AHRB self-report, behavioral, and neuroimaging data. The second program of research focuses on the impacts of early life adversity and exposures, from prenatal through infancy, encompassing both psychosocial stressors and physical exposures. Dr. Keating’s role is to focus on neurodevelopmental outcomes of early adversity and exposures, and the mechanisms through which they “get under the skin”, including epigenetic pathways.