Many questions in psychology sound simple but are extremely difficult to actually answer. For example, do childhood experiences, such as differing parenting styles or neighborhood wealth levels, affect the speed of children’s cognitive development? If so, what are those effects, and what are the neurological differences that cause them?

Those are the kinds of questions that Clinical Psychology PhD student Cleanthis Michael addresses with his research. But Michael also asks a more fundamental (and even more difficult) question: Can childhood experiences also influence neuroplasticity, the brain’s underlying ability to change in response to stimuli?

After receiving an undergraduate psychology degree from University College London and using neuroimaging to study brain development at UNC Chapel Hill, Michael enrolled at Michigan to work with Luke Hyde, Chris Monk, and their collaborators. “Drs. Hyde and Monk have been working with longitudinal studies following children at high risk for exposure to adversity, particularly through the Future of Families and Child Well Being Study,” Michael says. “These are very important projects, and I wanted to contribute to that work.”

Since arriving in Michigan, Michael has been remarkably productive. One pre-dissertation study published in JAMA Pediatrics explored the neurological effects of harsh versus warm parenting. It showed that harsh parenting at age three was linked to widespread connectivity changes in the brain, while harsh and warm parenting at ages five and nine were associated with more specific alterations to neural circuits involved in emotion regulation. Moreover, data from the Future of Families and Child Well Being Study showed that these changes appeared to affect resilience even 15 years later during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Michael’s dissertation investigates the possible effects of adversity and other experiences on neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to reorganize and form new connections in response to experiences. Neuroplasticity is critical for learning, so any changes to it will have downstream effects on nearly everything else in life. Thus, understanding whether and how childhood experiences impact neuroplasticity is exceptionally important. But it is also extremely difficult, partly due to limitations in available data and current brain imaging technology.

Michael’s dissertation addresses those challenges through three distinct studies. The first establishes a new theoretical framework hypothesizing that childhood experiences can speed up or slow down brain development and affect overall plasticity. Michael proposes that negative experiences may lower plasticity as a protective response against ongoing stress, while enriching environments might boost it. This work was accepted for publication in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

The second study uses a measure called “brain age” to investigate how environment and genetics influence the speed of brain development. Derived partly from machine learning analysis of brain scans, brain age is used to assess whether a person’s brain is developing more quickly or slowly than would be expected for their actual age. The study found that children exposed to more threatening experiences at home, such as harsh parenting and conflict, tended to show slower brain maturation. Genetics was also a factor, suggesting that genetically mediated behavioral tendencies might shape a child’s experiences at home by influencing how they are parented.

Michael’s third study will directly test the hypothesis proposed in the first study: that parenting styles influence neuroplasticity. With current brain imaging tools, directly observing plasticity in humans is nearly impossible, partly because the changes occur on such a small scale. Michael therefore uses an fMRI measure called fluctuation amplitude (FA) as proxy for plasticity itself. Prior animal research has shown that FA, which records spontaneous brain activity, is linked to important mechanisms of neuroplasticity such as myelination. The study will investigate whether harsh parenting lowers FA (indicating reduced plasticity) and supportive parenting increases it. Michael is currently finalizing imaging measures before conducting these analyses.

Looking ahead, Michael plans to defend his dissertation around May 2026, after which he will complete a clinical internship. Afterward, he hopes to continue his research in a postdoctoral fellowship, with a possible focus on how neuroplasticity is impacted by experience, influences cognitive development and mental health, and can be targeted by interventions to promote resilience in youth.