This Viewpoint discusses the importance of contextualizing stressful experiences and the neurodevelopmental trajectory to predict the risk of psychopathology.

How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

Neuropsychopharmacology - The exposome and the developing adolescent brain: understanding mechanisms of neuroplasticity

Increasing representation of youth in developmental neuroscience research is essential to elucidating neurobiological mechanisms of cognition, behavio…

Stress and drugs of abuse have a bidirectional relationship, such that stress is often seen as a driver of drug use, while at the same time drug use/abuse alters stress responses. Acute exposure to a ...

Longitudinal measurements of brain structure and function are critical for understanding how humans change over time. Traditional longitudinal approaches sample sparsely across large windows of time t...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are often used to inform individual differences in cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric phenotypes. These so-called “brain-behavior” association stu...

Neuropsychopharmacology - Integration of developmental and socio-cultural factors that confer risk for mental illness

Interested in the neuroscience of addiction? We are recruiting at all levels!! Reach out to Dr. Baranger – [email protected] Postdoctoral fellows/Senior Scientists: Please send an email conta…

Ojha et al. use longitudinal 7 T neuroimaging to characterize distinct developmental trajectories of fronto-amygdala connectivity across nuclei through adolescence. They identify how age-related conne...

Molecular Psychiatry - Psychedelic studies in nonhuman primates: Past and future