Nim Tottenham

General Area of Research

Developmental Affective Neuroscience, Limbic-Cortical Development, Early-Life Stress

Current Research

The research of the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab focuses on the development of neural circuits that underlie affective behaviors across childhood and adolescence, with a particular emphasis on limbic-cortical connections (e.g., amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex).
One major focus of our laboratory is to characterize normative human brain development. We use behavioral, physiological, and functional MRI methods with the aim of identifying sensitive periods during which the environment has the largest influence on neural phenotypes.
A second major focus is to characterize the effects of early-life stress on human brain development. To meet this aim, we also study the neurodevelopment of children and adolescents who experienced various forms of early life stress (e.g., adverse caregiving) in the hopes of understanding the long-term effects of early adversity on human brain development.