Daniel Keating

The overarching goal of my research focuses on discovering core, modifiable factors that lead to disparities in health and development from the prenatal period through emerging adulthood. This entails both “drilling down” to understand central biodevelopmental mechanisms, and “ramping up” to understand population patterns and societal structures that contribute to developmental health.

The first program of research (NICHD, Keating PI) focuses on adolescent cognitive, behavioral, and brain development, including neurocognitive and neuroimaging methods, aimed at understanding the neurodevelopmental pathways in adolescent and early adult health risk behavior (AHRB). We have collected self-report and neurocognitive task data on a diverse, representative cohort of 15-17 year-olds (N=2017 at Wave 1), and have completed two subsequent waves of data collection with them (up to age 21). A targeted subsample of this group (high and average risk-takers) also participated in a longitudinal neuroimaging study (fMRI), with two waves. While seeking funding to collect additional waves on the full cohort, we are pursuing multiple avenues of investigation with existing AHRB self-report, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data, with a focus on longitudinal analyses to explore factors that contribute to persistence versus desistance in health risk behavior of various types.

The second program of research focuses on the impacts of early life adversity and exposures, from prenatal through infancy, encompassing both psychosocial stressors and physical exposures. This is part of the national ECHO study (Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes; funding from NIH Office of the Director), in which a Michigan consortium is a research site, and includes cohorts for which data collection continues. My focus is on neurodevelopmental outcomes of early adversity and exposures, and the mechanisms through which they “get under the skin”, including epigenetic pathways.

I am open to working with new graduate students on either project for the Fall 2027 cohort.

Current course offerings: graduate seminar on Adolescent Development; undergraduate courses in Adolescent Psychology, Advanced Research in Adolescent Development, and Development of Stress and Resilience.

Recent representative publications

Keating, D. P. (2017). Born Anxious: The Lifelong Impact of Early Life Adversity – and How to Break the Cycle. New York: St. Martin’s Press. [2019 Eleanor Maccoby Book Award for Developmental Psychology, American Psychological Association, 2019]

Elliott, M. R., Kerver, J. M., Drew, A., Watson, K., Kornatowski, B., Norman, G. S., Copeland, G. E., Leissou, E., Ridenour, T., Kruger-Ndiaye, S., Ma, T., Ruden, D., Barone, C., Keating, D. P., Sokol, R. J., Johnson, C. C., & Paneth, N. (2025). Obtaining a Probability Sample of a Pregnancy Cohort of Births: A Review of the Problem and a Practical Solution. American Journal of Epidemiology. 10.1093/aje/kwaf110/8142321 

De Geronimo, F.G., Stoddard, S.A., Huntley, E.D., Keating, D.P. (2024). The Association of Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems and Prospective Self with Alcohol and Cannabis Use. Adolescents, 4, 453-468. https://doi.org/10.3390/adolescents4040032

Keating, D. P. (2024). Adolescent health risk behavior: The road ahead. Journal of Adolescent Health, 74(3), 397–399. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2023.12.008

Constante, K., Demidenko, M. I., Huntley, E. D., Rivas‐Drake, D., Keating, D. P., & Beltz, A. M. (2023). Personalized neural networks underlie individual differences in ethnic identity exploration and resolution. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 33(1), 24–42. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1111/jora.12760

Demidenko, M. I., Ip, K. I., Kelly, D. P., Constante, K., Goetschius, L. G., & Keating, D. P. (2021). Ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, and internalizing symptoms in preadolescence: Is parenting a buffer? Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 140, 128–144.  

https://doiorg.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1016/j.cortex.2021.02.032

Demidenko MI, Weigard AS, Ganesan K, Jang H, Jahn A, Huntley ED, Keating DP. (2021). Interactions between methodological and interindividual variability: How Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task contrast maps vary and impact associations with behavior. Brain Behaviour. 11(5):e02093. doi: 10.1002/brb3.2093. 

Constante, K., Huntley, E. D., Si, Y., Schillinger, E., Wagner, C., & Keating, D. P. (2021). Conceptualizing protective family context and its effect on substance use: Comparisons across diverse ethnic-racial youth. Substance Abuse, 42(4), 796–805. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1080/08897077.2020.1856289

Demidenko, M. I., Huntley, E. D., Jahn, A., Thomason, M. E., Monk, C. S., & Keating, D. P. (2020). Cortical and subcortical response to the anticipation of reward in high and average/low risk-taking adolescents. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 44. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100798 

Keating, D. P. (2016). Social inequality in population developmental health: An equity and justice issue. In Equity and justice in developmental science: Theoretical and methodological issues., Vol. 1. (pp. 75–104). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1016/bs.acdb.2015.12.002

Keating, D. P. (2016). Transformative role of epigenetics in child development research: Commentary on the special section. Child Development, 87(1), 135–142. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/10.1111/cdev.12488