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.