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In recent years, a growing body of research has demonstrated that parents’ and children’s brains often exhibit neural similarity and synchrony during shared activities, emotional exchanges, and everyday interactions. This interbrain alignment offers a novel window into the mechanisms through which social connection, caregiving, and development unfold. In this review, we provide a comprehensive synthesis of studies investigating parent–child neural similarity and synchrony, drawing on diverse neuroimaging tools, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, and electroencephalography. To bring conceptual clarity to this rapidly growing field, we introduce a 2 × 2 framework that categorizes research contexts along two key dimensions: level of interaction (low vs. high) and emotional salience (low vs. high). Using this framework, we organize and interpret the empirical literature, highlighting consistent findings, methodological variations, and developmental implications across different types of parent–child engagement. This framework not only helps structure existing knowledge but also reveals context-specific understanding in the literature. Finally, we outline future directions that emphasize the importance of longitudinal designs, cultural diversity, multimodal imaging, and expanding beyond the dyadic unit. This review aims to deepen the understanding of how neural alignment within families supports learning, emotion regulation, and social development across the life span. 

Adolescent depression has risen sharply, especially among racial-ethnic minority youths. Although racial-ethnic discrimination is known to be linked with depression, there is limited understanding of how individual differences in brain development contribute to this process. Drawing on the framework of adolescent neurobiological susceptibility, in this study, we examined the moderating role of hippocampal volume in the longitudinal association between racial-ethnic discrimination and adolescent depression. Using longitudinal data of racial-ethnic minority youths from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N= 5,061; age:M= 9.93 years; 52% female), we found that racial-ethnic discrimination was associated with adolescents’ increased depression 2 years later. A larger left hippocampal volume amplified the link between discrimination and depression. These findings highlight the detrimental role of racial-ethnic discrimination on adolescents’ psychological well-being and suggest that hippocampal volume may serve as a neurobiological marker of susceptibility, amplifying the negative impact of racial-ethnic discrimination among racial-ethnic minority youths. 

Abstract Adolescence is often viewed in Western cultures as a time of rebellion and irresponsibility. In this article, I synthesize recent research on stereotypes of adolescence that uses an interdisciplinary approach, integrating developmental psychology, cultural psychology, and neuroscience. I first discuss empirical evidence on cultural differences in stereotypes of adolescence, highlighting the importance of avoiding a one‐size‐fits‐all assumption about such stereotypes across cultures. Then I summarize the impact of teen stereotypes on youth's academic, behavioral, emotional, and neural development. Finally, I present an experimental intervention that can change youth's teen stereotypes and promote positive youth development. Taken together, this body of work suggests that how individuals navigate the adolescent years is driven in part by social constructions of this phase of development. The work also calls for more attention to changing negative stereotypes of adolescence at the policy and societal levels. 

The transition to adolescence is a critical period for mental health development. Socio-experiential environments play an important role in the emergence of depressive symptoms with some adolescents showing more sensitivity to social contexts than others. Drawing on recent developmental neuroscience advances, we examined whether hippocampal volume amplifies social context effects in the transition to adolescence. We analyzed 2-y longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD^®) study in a diverse sample of 11,832 youth (mean age: 9.914 y; range: 8.917 to 11.083 y; 47.8% girls) from 21 sites across the United States. Socio-experiential environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms, parental warmth, peer victimization, and prosocial school environment), hippocampal volume, and a wide range of demographic characteristics were measured at baseline. Youth’s symptoms of major depressive disorder were assessed at both baseline and 2 y later. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses showed that negative social environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms, and peer victimization) and the absence of positive social environments (i.e., parental warmth and prosocial school environment) predicted greater increases in youth’s depressive symptoms over 2 y. Importantly, left hippocampal volume amplified social context effects such that youth with larger left hippocampal volume experienced greater increases in depressive symptoms in more negative and less positive social environments. Consistent with brain–environment interaction models of mental health, these findings underscore the importance of families, peers, and schools in the development of depression during the transition to adolescence and show how neural structure amplifies social context sensitivity. 

We propose a screening method for high-dimensional data with ordinal competing risk outcomes, which is time-dependent and model-free. Existing methods are designed for cause-specific variable screening and fail to evaluate how a biomarker is associated with multiple competing events simultaneously. The proposed method utilizes the Volume under the ROC surface (VUS), which measures the concordance between values of a biomarker and event status at certain time points and provides an overall evaluation of the discrimination capacity of a biomarker. We show that the VUS possesses the sure screening property, i.e., true important covariates can be retained with probability tending to one, and the size of the selected set can be bounded with high probability. The VUS appears to be a viable model-free screening metric as compared to some existing methods in simulation studies, and it is especially robust to data contamination. Through an analysis of breast-cancer geneexpression data, we illustrate the unique insights into the overall discriminatory capability provided by the VUS. 

Abstract Parents' familism values predict a variety of Latinx American youth's academic adjustment. However, it is unclear how cultural values such as familism interact with youth's brain development, which is sensitive to sociocultural input, to shape their academic adjustment. Using a sample of 1916 Latinx American youth (mean age = 9.90 years, SD = .63 years; 50% girls) and their primary caregivers (mean age = 38.43 years, SD = 6.81 years; 90% mothers) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, this study examined the longitudinal relation between parents' familism values and youth's school disengagement, as well as the moderating role of youth's neural sensitivity to personal reward. Parents' familism values predicted youth's decreased school disengagement 1 year later, adjusting for their baseline school disengagement and demographic covariates. Notably, this association was more salient among youth who showed lower (vs. higher) neural activation in the ventral striatum and the lateral OFC during the anticipation of a personal reward. These findings underscore the protective role of familism for Latinx American youth, highlighting the necessity of developing culturally informed interventions that take into consideration a youth's brain development. 

Abstract In past decades, the positive role of self‐control in students' academic success has attracted plenty of scholarly attention. However, fewer studies have examined the link between adolescents' neural development of the inhibitory control system and their academic achievement, especially using a longitudinal approach. Moreover, less is known about the role of parents in this link. Using large‐scale longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (N = 9574; mean age = 9.94 years at baseline, SD = .63; 50% girls), the current study took an integrative biopsychosocial approach to explore the longitudinal link between early adolescents' fronto‐striatal connectivity and their academic achievement, with attention to the moderating role of parental warmth. Results showed that weaker intrinsic connectivity between the frontoparietal network and the striatum was associated with early adolescents' worse academic achievement over 2 years during early adolescence. Notably, parental warmth moderated the association between fronto‐striatal connectivity and academic achievement, such that weaker fronto‐striatal connectivity was only predictive of worse academic achievement among early adolescents who experienced low levels of parental warmth. Taken together, the findings demonstrate weaker fronto‐striatal connectivity as a risk factor for early adolescents' academic development and highlight parental warmth as a protective factor for academic development among those with weaker connectivity within the inhibitory control system. 

Abstract European Americans view high-intensity, open-mouthed ‘excited’ smiles more positively than Chinese because they value excitement and other high arousal positive states more. This difference is supported by reward-related neural activity, with European Americans showing greater Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc) activity to excited (vs calm) smiles than Chinese. But do these cultural differences generalize to all rewards, and are they related to real-world social behavior? European American (N = 26) and Chinese (N = 27) participants completed social and monetary incentive delay tasks that distinguished between the anticipation and receipt (outcome) of social and monetary rewards while undergoing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI). The groups did not differ in NAcc activity when anticipating social or monetary rewards. However, as predicted, European Americans showed greater NAcc activity than Chinese when viewing excited smiles during outcome (the receipt of social reward). No cultural differences emerged when participants received monetary outcomes. Individuals who showed increased NAcc activity to excited smiles during outcome had friends with more intense smiles on social media. These findings suggest that culture plays a specific role in modulating reward-related neural responses to excited smiles during outcome, which are associated with real-world relationships.