title: Leveraging Neuroscience to Inform Adolescent Health: The Need for an Innovative Transdisciplinary Developmental Science of Adolescence.
abstract: In this article, we consider how to leverage some of the rapid advances in developmental neuroscience in ways that can improve adolescent health. We provide a brief overview of several key areas of scientific progress relevant to these issues. We then focus on two examples of important health problems that increase sharply during adolescence: sleep problems and affective disorders. These examples illustrate how an integrative, developmental science approach provides new insights into treatment and intervention. They also highlight a cornerstone principle: how a deeper understanding of potentially modifiable factors-at key developmental inflection points along the trajectory toward clinical disorders-is beginning to inform, and may eventually transform, a broad range of innovative early intervention strategies to improve adolescent health.
authors.affiliation: University of California Berkeley, Institute for Human Development, Berkeley, California. Electronic address: asuleiman@berkeley.edu.
authors.forename: Ahna Ballonoff
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Suleiman
authors.affiliation: University of California Berkeley, Institute for Human Development, Berkeley, California; University of California Berkeley, School of Public Health, Berkeley, California.
authors.forename: Ronald E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Dahl
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D041923:Adolescent Development; D000067697:Adolescent Health; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Adolescent; Anxiety; Depression; Sleep; Transdisciplinary developmental science; Translational science