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Welcome to the Stress Neurobiology and Prevention (SNAP) research laboratory website. The SNAP Lab is a developmental translational research laboratory at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and operates as part of the Center for Translational Neuroscience (CTN) within the Department of Psychology. Our work focuses on three inter-related areas:
- Characterizing how stressful experiences that occur in infancy and childhood—for example, child abuse and neglect, family instability, institutional rearing—impact the development of key neurobiological regulatory systems, and studying the ways in which alterations in these neural systems mediate subsequent psychosocial adjustment.
- Employing randomized clinical trials to examine the effects of preventive interventions on the plasticity of these neural systems, as a potential pathway to improving cognitive, emotional, and psychological outcomes among children who have experienced significant early adversity.
- Impacting policy and practice towards high risk children and families by documenting the cost-effectiveness of preventive interventions, disseminating evidence-based preventive interventions in the public sector and other community settings, and advocating for empirically-informed approaches to decision making and resource allocation.