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Social reticence in early childhood is characterized by shy and anxiously avoidant behavior, and it confers risk for pediatric anxiety disorders later in development. Aberrant threat processing may play a critical role in this association between early reticent behavior and later psychopathology. The goal of this longitudinal study is to characterize developmental trajectories of neural mechanisms underlying threat processing and relate these trajectories to associations between early-childhood social reticence and adolescent anxiety.

•Infant amygdala-cingulate connectivity relates to observed distress to novelty.•In children with Behavioral Inhibition (BI), proactive and reactive control distinctly relate to anxiety.•Multimodal neuroimaging may identify brain networks involved in a BI-anxiety pathway.•Additional large-N longitudinal studies are needed.

Psychiatric symptoms are commonly comorbid in childhood. The ability to disentangle unique and shared correlates of comorbid symptoms facilitates personalized medicine. Cognitive control is implicated broadly in psychopathology, including in pediatric disorders characterized by anxiety and irritability. To disentangle cognitive control correlates of anxiety versus irritability, the current study leveraged both cross-sectional and longitudinal data from early childhood into adolescence.

This paper represents the outcome of a multidisciplinary discussion on what works, what doesn't, and what can be improved, in on-going work on bio-behavioural taxonomies and their biomarkers. The authors of this paper, representing a wide spectrum of bio-behavioural disciplines (clinical, developmental, differential psychology, neurophysiology, endocrinology, psychiatry, neurochemistry, neurosciences), have contributed more extensive opinions to the Theme Issue "Neurobiology of temperament, personality and psychopathology: what's next?". The authors identified ten directions in international and multidisciplinary cooperation, and multiple insights for "what is next" for each of these directions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created increased stress and anxiety for many; however, some individuals are particularly prone to heightened anxiety. It is unclear if and how prestress neurocognitive factors moderate risk for anxiety during high-stress situations. Enhanced error monitoring and a cognitive control strategy of more instantaneous (reactive) control have both been independently related to anxiety. We examined if a specific neurocognitive profile characterized by heightened error monitoring and a more reactive cognitive control strategy in adolescence predicts young adults’ anxiety trajectories across 3 early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.