Our research addresses the long-standing question of why some children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, fall behind their peers in cognitive development while others thrive. Early variability in cognitive development predicts many social and economic outcomes in adulthood, including employment, life satisfaction and health. Research at the D.E.N. takes several major approaches to address this broad question. We combine behavioral methods that illuminate children’s home experiences with neuroimaging measures that reveal the neurocognitive basis of children’s performance. Our research leverages naturalistic, longitudinal observations and experimental designs to examine how the early parental input in the home environment relates to children’s cognitive development. We complement this approach with structural and functional neuroimaging measures to analyze how parental background and parental input relate to children's neurocognitive development. We focus on both children with typical-developmental trajectories as well as children who are born preterm, and children with early brain injury.