Nusslock’s North Star

When Robin Nusslock was 18 years old, one of his aunts took her life after years of struggling with severe depression and anxiety as well as paralyzing levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder tendencies.

Nusslock recalls a profound pain permeating his close-knit and loving family. It was a jarring, life-shaping moment for Nusslock, who desperately wanted to be a support system for others and promote healing.

“That event created a north star for me,” says Nusslock, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. “I wanted to help protect people from suffering.”

A scientific purpose

Over the next decade, Nusslock discovered science as his way to make a difference. He studied psychology as an undergraduate en route to earning a PhD in clinical psychology in 2009. The following year, he joined Northwestern’s faculty ranks, eager to further study the nature of the mind and replace pain with strength and stability. Since that time, Nusslock’s research has examined how the brain creates emotion and how those brain systems are implicated in mental and physical health.

Quite intentionally, Nusslock centers his work on adolescence, a period characterized by significant brain maturation and development as well as a time in which many mental health problems take root. By understanding how mental health problems emerge before the onset of actual symptoms, Nusslock says his research team can use basic science to inform both interventions and preventative actions to reduce mental health disorders.

“If we can help people navigate the critical period of adolescence with more internal and external support, I believe we can really help protect people from a lot of suffering over the course of their lives,” says Nusslock, a member of Northwestern’s new Institute for Adolescent Mental Health and Well-Being.

At present, Nusslock is leading multiple grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to understand the adolescent brain and the profiles of risk and resiliency for mental health problems during this critical life stage.

The brain, sleep, and mental health

In one five-year project called Circadian, Reward, and Emotion Systems in Teens (CREST), Nusslock and his colleague, Lauren Alloy at Temple University, are using tools such as MRI and electrophysiology to study adolescent brain systems involved in positive and rewarding emotions, which are relevant to understanding the onset of mood disorders during the adolescent window. Tracking about 250 teen participants over time, Nusslock and Alloy are investigating if high sensitivity in the brain systems underlying positive emotions predict increased risk for mood disorders.

But there’s another important component to the CREST project: Nusslock’s team is also assessing sleep amid growing evidence that circadian rhythm disruptions can also generate health problems and risk for mood disorders.

“What we’re trying to understand is how risks in positive brain systems intersect with brain systems involved in regulating our circadian rhythms to create a two-hit vulnerability for mood disorders during adolescence,” he says.

If Nusslock’s team is successful in identifying risk factors before the onset of symptoms, it opens the door to early interventions and prevention to counter depression, anxiety, and other crippling conditions currently hindering quality of life and inhibiting young adults from realizing their full potential.

“We’re measuring the psychology, the environment, and the biology to see if we can help young people navigate this critical period of life in a way that promotes resiliency and well-being as opposed to risk or vulnerability for mental health problems like mood disorders,” says Nusslock, who is currently working to renew the CREST project grant with NIH.

The mind and the body

In another five-year, NIH-funded project, Reward Immune Systems and Emotion (RISE), Nusslock and Alloy are examining the same brain systems involved in positive emotions and, again like CREST, aiming to study adolescents before the onset of a mental health problem.

But RISE is notably distinct from CREST in two ways.

First, the researchers shifted the focus from sleep to stress, evaluating how stress affects the development of these brain systems in ways that generate risk for mental health problems.

And second, RISE embraces a whole-person perspective of adolescent well-being and health given a collaboration with Gregory Miller, Nusslock’s Department of Psychology colleague who studies the effects of stress on the immune system.

“We’re interested in how the brain and body communicate and interact during adolescence in ways that either push people towards resiliency and well-being or move them towards a pathway of risk and vulnerability for mental health problems and physical health problems,” Nusslock says.

Through RISE, Nusslock hopes to gain a better grasp on the transition from adolescence to adulthood and also track participants for longer periods of time to study life outcomes, such as the first onset of depression and stress-related health problems as well as health treatments.

“During adolescence, the soil is set for so many health problems, both mental and physical, that emerge later in life,” he says. “The question with RISE and every project I’m involved in is, ‘How can use science and what we know about the developing brain and body to reduce suffering and promote health, well-being, and flourishing?’”