Clinical Science Brown Bag: The long reach of early parenting: a neurogenetics approach to the development of antisocial behavior

Antisocial behaviors, such as aggression and rule breaking, cause incredible costs to society and alter the trajectory of many young lives. In this talk, I will briefly describe work from my lab examining the role of parenting in the development of antisocial behavior. First, I will describe a series of studies we have done to examine the development of early callous-unemotional behaviors, a developmental risk factor for psychopathy. These studies show that callous-unemotional behaviors can be identified in the preschool period and that parenting interacts with genetic background to predict the development of callous-unemotional behaviors. Second, I will discuss our work linking parenting in early childhood to neural reactivity and risk for antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Throughout the talk, I will highlight the ways in which experience and genetic background interact to affect the development of the brain and behavior.