We describe an ecological approach to understanding the developing brain, with a focus on the effects of poverty-related adversity on brain function. We articulate how combining multilevel ecological ...models from developmental science and developmental psychopathology with human neuroscience can inform our approach to understanding the developmental neuroscience of risk and resilience. To illustrate this approach, we focus on associations between poverty and brain function, the roles parents and neighborhoods play in this context, and the potential impact of developmental timing. We also describe the major challenges and needed advances in these areas of research to better understand how and why poverty-related adversity may impact the developing brain, including the need for: a population neuroscience approach with greater attention to sampling and representation, genetically informed and causal designs, advances in assessing context and brain function, caution in interpretation of effects, and a focus on resilience. Work in this area has major implications for policy and prevention, which are discussed.
Public Significance Statement
Millions of youth grow up in poverty and are exposed to an unequal share of adversity which impacts brain and behavior development. An ecological approach to developmental neuroscience can help to articulate the active ingredients associated with poverty that impact brain development. Better understanding how and why various adversities, including harsh parenting and neighborhood poverty, impact brain development can inform policies to prevent negative outcomes.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
The family stress model (FSM) is an influential family process model that posits that socioeconomic disadvantage impacts child outcomes via its effects on the parents. Existing evaluations of the FSM ...are constrained by limited measures of socioeconomic disadvantage, cross‐sectional research designs, and reliance on non‐population‐based samples. The current study tested the FSM in a subsample of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,918), a large population‐based study of children followed from birth through the age of nine. We employed a longitudinal framework and used measures of socioeconomic disadvantage beyond economic resources. Although the hypothesized FSM pathways were identified in the longitudinal model (e.g., economic pressure at the age of one was associated with maternal distress at the age of three, maternal distress at the age of three was associated with parenting behaviors at the age of five), the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage at childbirth on youth socioemotional outcomes at the age of nine did not operate through all of the hypothesized mediators. In longitudinal change models that accounted for the stability in constructs, multiple indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage at childbirth were indirectly associated with youth externalizing behaviors at the age of nine via either economic pressure at the age of one or changes in maternal warmth from ages 3 to 5. Greater economic pressure at the age of one, increases in maternal distress from ages 1 to 3, and decreases/increases in maternal warmth/harshness from ages 3 to 5 were also directly associated with increases in externalizing behaviors from ages 5 to 9. Results provide partial support for the FSM across the first decade of life.
A growing literature suggests that adversity is associated with later altered brain function, particularly within the corticolimbic system that supports emotion processing and salience detection ...(e.g., amygdala, prefrontal cortex PFC). Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage has been shown to predict maladaptive behavioral outcomes, particularly for boys, most of the research linking adversity to corticolimbic function has focused on family‐level adversities. Moreover, although animal models and studies of normative brain development suggest that there may be sensitive periods during which adversity exerts stronger effects on corticolimbic development, little prospective evidence exists in humans. Using two low‐income samples of boys (n = 167; n = 77), Census‐derived neighborhood disadvantage during early childhood, but not adolescence, was uniquely associated with greater amygdala, but not PFC, reactivity to ambiguous neutral faces in adolescence and young adulthood. These associations remained after accounting for several family‐level adversities (e.g., low family income, harsh parenting), highlighting the independent and developmentally specific neural effects of the neighborhood context. Furthermore, in both samples, indicators measuring income and poverty status of neighbors were predictive of amygdala function, suggesting that neighborhood economic resources may be critical to brain development.
Across two prospective longitudinal studies, Census‐derived neighborhood disadvantage in early childhood was associated with greater amygdala reactivity to ambiguous facial expressions in adolescent and young adult men. These associations remained statistically‐significant after accounting for a host of family‐level adversities (i.e., low family income and maternal education, maternal depression, harsh parenting, inter‐parental conflict) during early childhood and neighborhood disadvantage during adolescence.
Population-based neuroimaging studies that feature complex sampling designs enable researchers to generalize their results more widely. However, several theoretical and analytical questions pose ...challenges to researchers interested in these data. The following is a resource for researchers interested in using population-based neuroimaging data. We provide an overview of sampling designs and describe the differences between traditional model-based analyses and survey-oriented design-based analyses. To elucidate key concepts, we leverage data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ Study (ABCD Study®), a population-based sample of 11,878 9–10-year-olds in the United States. Analyses revealed modest sociodemographic discrepancies between the target population of 9–10-year-olds in the U.S. and both the recruited ABCD sample and the analytic sample with usable structural and functional imaging data. In evaluating the associations between socioeconomic resources (i.e., constructs that are tightly linked to recruitment biases) and several metrics of brain development, we show that model-based approaches over-estimated the associations of household income and under-estimated the associations of caregiver education with total cortical volume and surface area. Comparable results were found in models predicting neural function during two fMRI task paradigms. We conclude with recommendations for ABCD Study® users and users of population-based neuroimaging cohorts more broadly.
•Sample vs. population sociodemographic differences impact generalizability.•Analyses using complex probability samples can be model-based or design-based.•Descriptive inferences to the target population must rely on design-based analyses.•Multivariable analyses should be compared in design- and model-based frameworks.
Emerging literature links neighborhood disadvantage to altered neural function in regions supporting socioemotional and threat processing. Few studies, however, have examined the proximal mechanisms ...through which neighborhood disadvantage is associated with neural functioning. In a sample of 7- to 19-year-old twins recruited from disadvantaged neighborhoods (354 families, 708 twins; 54.5% boys; 78.5% White, 13.0% Black, 8.5% other racial/ethnic group membership), we found that exposure to community violence was related to increased amygdala reactivity during socioemotional processing and may be one mechanism linking neighborhood disadvantage to amygdala functioning. Importantly, parenting behavior appeared to modulate these effects, such that high parental nurturance buffered the effect of exposure to community violence on amygdala reactivity. These findings elucidate the potential impact of exposure to community violence on brain function and highlight the role parents can play in protecting youth from the neural effects of exposure to adversity.
Public Significance StatementAlthough prior studies have primarily focused on family-level adversities, developmental researchers are now paying increased attention to the effect of neighborhood-level adversity on youth brain development. We find that increased exposure to community violence is related to heightened amygdala reactivity to threat and may be a mechanism explaining the link between neighborhood disadvantage and brain function in youth. Further, the study highlights that nurturing parenting can protect children from the risks posed by living in a disadvantaged and dangerous neighborhood.
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Childhood adversity is thought to undermine youth socioemotional development via altered neural function within regions that support emotion processing. These effects are hypothesized to be ...developmentally specific, with adversity in early childhood sculpting subcortical structures (e.g., amygdala) and adversity during adolescence impacting later-developing structures (e.g., prefrontal cortex; PFC). However, little work has tested these theories directly in humans. Using prospectively collected longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) (N = 4,144) and neuroimaging data from a subsample of families recruited in adolescence (N = 162), the current study investigated the trajectory of harsh parenting across childhood (i.e., ages 3 to 9) and how initial levels versus changes in harsh parenting across childhood were associated with corticolimbic activation and connectivity during socioemotional processing. Harsh parenting in early childhood (indexed by the intercept term from a linear growth curve model) was associated with less amygdala, but not PFC, reactivity to angry facial expressions. In contrast, change in harsh parenting across childhood (indexed by the slope term) was associated with less PFC, but not amygdala, activation to angry faces. Increases in, but not initial levels of, harsh parenting were also associated with stronger positive amygdala–PFC connectivity during angry face processing.
Models of differential susceptibility hypothesize that neural function may be a marker of differential susceptibility to context, but no studies have tested this hypothesis. Using a sample of 310 ...young men from low-income urban neighborhoods, this study investigated amygdala reactivity to facial expressions as a moderator of the relations between socioeconomic resources and later antisocial behavior (AB) and income. For individuals with high amygdala reactivity, greater socioeconomic resources at age 20 predicted less AB and greater income at age 22. For young men with low amygdala reactivity, however, socioeconomic resources at age 20 did not predict later outcomes. Amygdala reactivity to fearful facial expressions, key to the etiology of AB, moderated links between resources and AB. In contrast, amygdala reactivity more generally to multiple facial expressions moderated the effects of resources on later income attainment. Both interactions met rigorous quantitative criteria for patterns of differential susceptibility rather than diathesis stress or vantage sensitivity. Moreover, these associations remained significant after inclusion of socioeconomic resources during earlier developmental periods. These results suggest that greater amygdala reactivity to facial expressions is a marker of greater susceptibility to context, for better or for worse, during the transition to adulthood.
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Youth growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely than their advantaged peers to face negative behavioral and mental health outcomes. Although studies have shown that adversity can ...undermine positive development via its impact on the developing brain, few studies have examined the association between neighborhood disadvantage and neural function, and no study has investigated potential social mechanisms within the neighborhood that might link neighborhood disadvantage to altered neural function. The current study evaluated the association between neighborhood disadvantage and amygdala reactivity during socioemotional face processing. We also assessed whether and which neighborhood-level social processes were related to amygdala reactivity, and whether these social processes mediated or moderated the association between neighborhood disadvantage and altered amygdala reactivity. We examined these aims in a registered report, using a sample of twins aged 7–19 years (N = 354 families, 708 twins) recruited from birth records with enrichment for neighborhood disadvantage. Twins completed a socioemotional face processing fMRI task and a sample of unrelated participants from the twins’ neighborhoods were also recruited to serve as informants on neighborhood social processes. We found that neighborhood disadvantage was associated with greater right amygdala reactivity to threat, but only when neighborhood informants perceived norms in the neighborhood to be more permissive regarding general safety and management. The findings from this research add to the growing literature highlighting the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on amygdala function and the ways that supportive social processes may buffer the impact of adversity on brain function.
General cognitive ability (GCA) is an individual difference dimension linked to important academic, occupational, and health-related outcomes and its development is strongly linked to differences in ...socioeconomic status (SES). Complex abilities of the human brain are realized through interconnections among distributed brain regions, but brain-wide connectivity patterns associated with GCA in youth, and the influence of SES on these connectivity patterns, are poorly understood. The present study examined functional connectomes from 5937 9- and 10-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) multi-site study. Using multivariate predictive modeling methods, we identified whole-brain functional connectivity patterns linked to GCA. In leave-one-site-out cross-validation, we found these connectivity patterns exhibited strong and statistically reliable generalization at 19 out of 19 held-out sites accounting for 18.0% of the variance in GCA scores (cross-validated partial η
). GCA-related connections were remarkably dispersed across brain networks: across 120 sets of connections linking pairs of large-scale networks, significantly elevated GCA-related connectivity was found in 110 of them, and differences in levels of GCA-related connectivity across brain networks were notably modest. Consistent with prior work, socioeconomic status was a strong predictor of GCA in this sample, and we found that distributed GCA-related brain connectivity patterns significantly statistically mediated this relationship (mean proportion mediated: 15.6%, p < 2 × 10
). These results demonstrate that socioeconomic status and GCA are related to broad and diffuse differences in functional connectivity architecture during early adolescence, potentially suggesting a mechanism through which socioeconomic status influences cognitive development.
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