When Juliet Davidow was a teenager, she noticed something curious: Even though she and her friends shared similar life experiences, their outcomes often looked very different.

“Some teens I was friends with came through their adolescence relatively unscathed, whereas others were less fortunate,” says Davidow, an assistant professor of psychology at Northeastern University.

That early observation sparked a lasting interest in how people grow and change. In college, Davidow began studying how the human brain develops over time — and how that development influences thoughts, emotions and behavior.

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Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University