‘A Window of Opportunity’

While working as a research assistant in a New York City-based lab studying patients with schizophrenia, Katie Insel noted a curious trend.

Time and again, Insel listened to patients in their 40s and 50s vividly recount their first touchpoint with mental health struggles. Nearly all pointed to a time in adolescence or early adulthood. The shared overlap in experiences intrigued Insel and sparked a particular fascination with the developing young mind.

“Adolescence seemed like this prime opportunity for early intervention and also a chance to understand how the brain gets wired in response to new experiences,” Insel says.

Today, Insel, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, is studying how changes in the adolescent brain shape the way adolescents think, act, and make decisions.

Getting deep with adolescents

In summer 2025, Insel launched a research study called Scan Camp at her Northwestern-based research lab. The multi-layered project represents a novel approach to studying the developing brain.

Traditional studies of the adolescent mind and mental health often examine how large clusters of individuals differ from one another with the expressed goal of identifying those at risk of mental health issues or even those currently experiencing symptoms. Insel’s work, however, embraces a different strategy. Instead of comparing groups or differences between individuals, Insel is examining changes that happen within individual adolescents over time. She is focused on understanding individuals’ emotions and behaviors throughout their daily lives and what that means for their well-being.

“We’re really interested in how different brain systems are developing throughout adolescence to support changes in how teens make decisions, how they engage in self-control, and how they learn and form memories,” says Insel, who received the Association for Psychological Science’s Rising Star award in 2024.

In Scan Camp, Insel’s team completes eight MRI scans with each participating teenager over the course of 4-8 weeks. The scans include both high-resolution images of gray and white matter in the teens’ brains as well as functional MRIs investigating brain activity during rest as well as active tasks. This repeated scanning approach allows Insel’s team to map brain networks unique to every participant rather than relying on one “average” brain, which is the prevailing method in many similar projects.

“We generate a lot of data not from having a massive number of participants, but rather from going deep with single individuals,” says Insel, whose research group also captures information on teens’ daily activities, from sleep to emotional experiences, via text message check-ins as well as measuring the concentration of pubertal hormones in their saliva.

Whereas a typical study might collect 10-15 minutes of brain activity while participants rest in the scanner, Insel’s team accumulates more than 200 minutes of each individual’s resting brain activity in Scan Camp. The added data unlocks opportunity for deeper analyses of brain networks.

“This approach gives us more precision in looking at each adolescent’s brain networks, which lets us pick up idiosyncrasies that are unique to each individual’s brain,” Insel says.

Opportunities vs. vulnerabilities

By linking individualized brain maps to each adolescent’s daily patterns of sleep, physical activity, and mood, Insel and her team are beginning to understand how the brain’s activity shifts alongside everyday changes in life. Their findings could generate more personalized strategies for supporting adolescent mental health, learning, and well-being.

“If we can figure out the experiences that help teens stay healthy or even those that amplify vulnerabilities, then we can better steer them onto a safer path,” says Insel, a member of Northwestern’s newly formed Institute for Adolescent Mental Health and Well-Being. “Adolescence is this special moment where we can still implement changes to help people course correct.”

Insel, in fact, calls adolescence a “window of opportunity.” As teens start venturing into the world with increased agency and autonomy, they encounter robust opportunities to flourish and launch themselves into happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives. At the same time, however, Insel also sees a “window of vulnerability” in adolescence, when changes to the mind, body, and personal environments can amplify the risk of mental health struggles.

With approximately one in three youth reporting persistent feelings of hopelessness and sadness, Insel considers it vital to develop a more nuanced understanding of not only who is at risk but also the situational factors in teenagers’ environment or daily experiences changing the ways they respond emotionally as well as how their brain functions.

“If we can figure out moments or windows of time when an adolescent is at risk, we can leverage this detailed information about their daily lives to come up with better strategies to help them,” Insel says.