Editorial: Large Datasets, Small Effect Sizes: Considerations Regarding Optimized Approaches to Identify Targets for Early Interventions Fostering Brain Health

Abstract

The origins of youth psychopathology are best studied by integrating clinical and developmental science, an approach known as developmental psychopathology.¹ This relatively young scientific discipline views youth psychopathology as the result of the dynamic interplay of neurobiological, psychological, and environmental risk and protective factors that transcend traditional diagnostic categories. Etiological questions within this framework include whether clinically relevant phenotypes, such as perturbed emotion regulation cross-sectionally linked to atypical brain morphometry, drive deviations from normative neurodevelopmental trajectories or should be viewed as the consequence of atypical brain maturation. The answer to such questions will have important treatment implications but necessitates the skillful integration of different levels of analysis across time. So, studies employing such an approach are rare.