Changing trajectories: brain development, plasticity and intervention across the life course

Abstract

How does the developing brain establish efficient networks that allow us to extract and use social and cognitive information? This question has been at the centre of my research, together with an interest in how these networks change as the brain matures, how they support cognitive development, and how their development relates to mental health.

In this lecture, I will trace how these questions have shaped my research, from early work on the development of face processing and functional specialisation, through adolescence, emotion regulation and anxiety, to studies of brain neurochemistry and neuroplasticity. A growing focus of my work has been whether we can move beyond describing developmental trajectories to understanding how they might be influenced to support optimal brain function and mental health.

More recently, this has led me to consider a wider range of biological and environmental influences on the brain, including nutrition and the microbiome–gut–brain axis, and to extend these questions beyond childhood and adolescence to other periods of substantial biological and psychological change across the life course. Along the way, I will reflect on how the scientific questions — and the methods available to answer them — have evolved, and where this may take us next.

A short biography 

Professor Kathrin Cohen Kadosh is Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Surrey, where she leads the Social Brain and Development Lab.  

Her research investigates how the brain develops and changes across the life course, with a particular focus on the neural mechanisms underlying cognition, social and emotional processing, and mental health.  

Her work combines cognitive neuroscience, neuroimaging and brain neurochemistry with increasingly interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the biological and environmental factors that shape brain function.  

More recently, her research has focused on whether these trajectories can be influenced through targeted interventions, including nutritional approaches and modulation of the microbiome–gut–brain axis.