About

Dr. Dylan Gee is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She earned her B.A. in Psychological and Brain Studies from Dartmouth College and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA. Before joining Yale's faculty, Dr. Gee completed a clinical internship at Weill Cornell Medical College and a research fellowship at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology. Her research centers on developmental psychopathology, aiming to delineate typical and atypical brain development. She investigates how early environments, including stress, trauma, and parenting, influence sensitive periods in neurodevelopment and contribute to risk for anxiety and stress-related disorders. Dr. Gee's work also focuses on translating knowledge of brain development to inform clinical interventions and policy related to youth mental health.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Psychiatry
• Developmental psychology
• Public relations
• Business
• Pathology
• Neuroscience
• Clinical psychology
• Internal medicine
• Nursing
• Social psychology
• Audiology
• Engineering
• Family medicine
• Psychoanalysis
• Cognitive psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Pediatrics
• Physiology
• Psychotherapist
• Applied psychology
• Virology

Selected publications

• Parent-child neural similarity during socioemotional processing relates to internalizing symptoms

  2026-04-19

  articleOpen access

  Intergenerational transmission of mental well-being and socioemotional functioning is widely documented at the behavioral level, yet how such patterns are instantiated in the brain remains poorly understood. Using a movie-watching fMRI paradigm, we investigated parent-child similarity in socioemotional processing and its associations with family environment, parental emotion regulation, and similarity in internalizing symptoms. Across 258 family members (120 children, 138 parents), parent–child dyads showed greater neural similarity in socioemotional processing than unrelated adult–child pairs. Effects were concentrated in prefrontal and temporal regions, particularly the right lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC). Neural similarity was stronger in mother–daughter and father–son dyads. Poorer family functioning was associated with reduced whole-brain similarity. Critically, parent-child right lateral PFC similarity was associated with similarity in internalizing symptoms depending on parental emotion regulation. These findings establish parent–child socioemotional neural similarity as a context-dependent pathway through which intergenerational patterns of mental well-being may emerge.

  PublisherDOI

• What we have learned about adolescent mental health and where we are going after a decade with the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study

  Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · 2026-01-28

  articleOpen access

  This review synthesizes ten years of research utilizing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, emphasizing how the study's comprehensive, longitudinal design supports a multivariate understanding of adolescent mental health. We focus on studies that have examined the collective or interacting relations of multiple factors to mental health in adolescents, as this unique dataset allows for examining more complex configurations of risk factors. We highlight key findings from ABCD data that have deepened our understanding of the risk factors shaping mental health outcomes in adolescence. Findings underscore the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and/or contextual factors on adolescent mental health. We conclude with a forward-looking discussion of emerging research priorities and opportunities to further leverage the ABCD dataset to inform developmental theory, prevention, and intervention efforts.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Threat and Childhood Security

  OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) · 2026-02-27

  other
  Publisher

• Heterogeneity in Developmental Trajectories of Internalizing and Externalizing Symptomatology: Associations with Risk and Protective Factors

  Child Psychiatry & Human Development · 2025-01-09 · 9 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Transdiagnostic Symptom Domains Have Distinct Patterns of Association With Head Motion During Multimodal Imaging in Children

  Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science · 2025-04-17 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Background: It is unclear how transdiagnostic symptoms including attention, disruptive behavior, and internalizing problems are linked to in-scanner motion in children across structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In the current study, we examined whether transdiagnostic symptoms of attention, disruptive behavior, and internalizing problems were associated with scanner motion in children during multimodal imaging. Methods: In 9045 children ages 9 to 10 years in the ABCD (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development) Study, logistic regression and linear mixed-effects models were used to examine associations between motion and behavior. Motion was indexed using ABCD Study quality control (QC) metrics and mean framewise displacement for T1- and T2-weighted structural, resting-state, and diffusion MRI; stop-signal task; monetary incentive delay task; and emotional n-back task. The Child Behavior Checklist was used as a continuous measure of symptom severity. Results: Greater severity of attention and disruptive behavior problems was associated with a lower likelihood of passing motion QC across imaging modalities, while increased internalizing severity was associated with a higher likelihood of passing. There was also an interaction between sex and attention-related problems in passing QC for T2-weighted and diffusion MRI scans. Increased attention and disruptive behavior problems were associated with increased mean motion, whereas increased internalizing problems were associated with decreased mean motion. Greater severity of attention problems was associated with worse performance across the fMRI tasks. Conclusions: These findings have implications for advancing the development of computational and behavioral approaches for mitigating motion effects in youths, enhancing accessibility of imaging protocols and representativeness influences across child psychiatric disorders, and identifying brain-based biomarkers.

  PublisherDOI

• Dynamic Resting-State Network Markers of Disruptive Behavior Problems in Youth

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-05-20

  preprintOpen access

  Background: Childhood disruptive behavior problems are linked to aberrant integrity within large-scale cognitive control networks. However, it is unclear if transitory or dynamic variation in the functional brain architecture is a marker of disruptive behavior problems. The current study tested whether functional connectivity across dynamic networks is distinctly associated with the transdiagnostic symptom domain of disruptive behavior problems in children. Methods: Participants were aged 9-10 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, who completed resting-state fMRI (N=877). We employed a dynamic connectivity approach leveraging a hidden semi-Markov model (HSMM) to identify transient properties of brain networks and states. Models estimated the time spent in each state (occupancy time) and the number of consecutive timepoints in a state (dwell time) for each participant. Linear regression models were utilized to identify distinct associations between dynamic properties (occupancy and sojourn times) and severity of disruptive behavior problems, accounting for other commonly co-occurring symptoms. Results: Dynamic network markers of disruptive behavior problems included increased time in network states characterized by globally aberrant connectivity patterns in circuitry involved in cognitive control including frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks. Replication of findings was found in a held-out sample of resting-state fMRI runs in which greater severity of disruptive behavior problems was uniquely linked to greater occupancy time in similarly characterized brain states. Conclusion: Transdiagnostic, dynamic resting-state markers of disruptive behavior problems in youth may assist in the development of brain-based biomarkers for monitoring treatment outcomes, assessing circuit target engagement and informing clinical decisions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Mental Health and Clinical Psychological Science in the Time of COVID-19: Challenges, Opportunities, and a Call to Action

  UNC Libraries · 2025-05-13

  articleOpen access

  COVID-19 presents significant social, economic, and medical challenges. Because COVID-19 has already begun to precipitate huge increases in mental health problems, clinical psychological science must assert a leadership role in guiding a national response to this secondary crisis. In this article, COVID-19 is conceptualized as a unique, compounding, multidimensional stressor that will create a vast need for intervention and necessitate new paradigms for mental health service delivery and training. Urgent challenge areas across developmental periods are discussed, followed by a review of psychological symptoms that likely will increase in prevalence and require innovative solutions in both science and practice. Implications for new research directions, clinical approaches, and policy issues are discussed to highlight the opportunities for clinical psychological science to emerge as an updated, contemporary field capable of addressing the burden of mental illness and distress in the wake of COVID-19 and beyond.

  PublisherDOI

• Person-centered analyses reveal that developmental adversity at moderate levels and neural threat/safety discrimination are associated with lower anxiety in early adulthood

  Communications Psychology · 2025-03-05 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Parsing heterogeneity in the nature of adversity exposure and neurobiological functioning may facilitate better understanding of how adversity shapes individual variation in risk for and resilience against anxiety. One putative mechanism linking adversity exposure with anxiety is disrupted threat and safety learning. Here, we applied a person-centered approach (latent profile analysis) to characterize patterns of adversity exposure at specific developmental stages and threat/safety discrimination in corticolimbic circuitry in 120 young adults. We then compared how the resultant profiles differed in anxiety symptoms. Three latent profiles emerged: (1) a group with lower lifetime adversity, higher neural activation to threat, and lower neural activation to safety; (2) a group with moderate adversity during middle childhood and adolescence, lower neural activation to threat, and higher neural activation to safety; and (3) a group with higher lifetime adversity exposure and minimal neural activation to both threat and safety. Individuals in the second profile had lower anxiety than the other profiles. These findings demonstrate how variability in within-person combinations of adversity exposure and neural threat/safety discrimination can differentially relate to anxiety, and suggest that for some individuals, moderate adversity exposure during middle childhood and adolescence could be associated with processes that foster resilience to future anxiety.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Psychological and environmental correlates of locus of control and posttraumatic stress symptoms: A latent profile analysis.

  Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy · 2025-08-14 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVE: Early-life stress (ELS) has been linked to the development of psychopathology-related outcomes, including posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Locus of control (LOC) is one factor thought to be critical to the development of PTSS. METHOD: = 665) to identify subgroups based on LOC orientation and PTSS severity and to explore early environmental correlates of individuals' membership in distinct subgroups. RESULTS: Across both samples, results of the latent profile analyses indicated a best fitting five-class solution. Cumulative ELS and perceived uncontrollability of ELS exposure emerged as significant predictors of subgroup membership in the Mechanical Turk sample. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that associations between perceptions of control at the event (i.e., controllability during a stressful event) and global (i.e., LOC orientation) levels may play a role in the development of stress-related symptoms following ELS. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Multivariate Links Between the Developmental Timing of Adversity Exposure and White Matter Tract Connectivity in Adulthood

  Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging · 2025-02-18 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• 7/21 ABCD-USA CONSORTIUM: RESEARCH PROJECT SITE AT YALE

  NIH · $19.7M · 2015–2027

• CAREER: Neurodevelopmental Mechanisms of Stressor Controllability and Resilience

  NSF · $706k · 2022–2027

• Novel Mechanisms of Fear Reduction Targeting the Biological State of the Developing Brain

  NIH · $1.3M · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Nim Tottenham

  Columbia University

  77 shared

• Alexis Brieant

  University of Vermont

  57 shared

• Hajer Nakua

  Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

  51 shared

• Anna Vannucci

  Columbia University

  50 shared

• divya brundavanam

  Karolinska Institutet

  50 shared

• Jenny Harris

  50 shared

• Jack R Lovell

  University of Colorado Boulder

  50 shared

• Emily M. Cohodes

  Yale University

  40 shared

Labs

• CANDLabPI

  Focuses on developmental psychopathology, delineating typical and atypical brain development, and translating knowledge of brain development to inform clinical interventions and policy related to youth mental health.

Education

• B.A., Psychological & Brain Sciences

  Dartmouth College

• Ph.D., Psychology

  University of California Los Angeles

Awards & honors

• NIH Director’s Early Independence Award
• NARSAD Young Investigator Award
• Jacobs Foundation Early Career Award