SEED Laboratory

The SEED Laboratory (Signatures of Early Emergence and Divergence) investigates one of the central questions in psychiatry: why individuals with shared familial liability for psychosis and bipolar spectrum disorders diverge toward different developmental trajectories, with some progressing to serious mental illness while others remain resilient. We seek to identify the earliest developmental paraphenotypes – traits that emerge in parallel with clinical symptoms from shared neurodevelopmental systems – that underlie these distinct clinical outcomes.

To address this question, we integrate multimodal approaches spanning neurocognition, physiology, digital phenotyping, electronic health records, social determinants of health, and advanced computational methods. Our research focuses primarily on children and adolescents to understand how early-life neurodevelopmental processes shape later neuropsychiatric outcomes. By translating these multidimensional signatures into scalable, clinically actionable tools, we aim to enable earlier identification of risk, more personalized intervention, and developmentally informed, preemptive psychiatry.

Research in the SEED Laboratory is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF).