Background
Stressful events, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, are major contributors to anxiety and depression, but only a subset of individuals develop psychopathology. In a population‐based sample ...(N = 174) with a high representation of marginalized individuals, this study examined adolescent functional network connectivity as a marker of susceptibility to anxiety and depression in the context of adverse experiences.
Methods
Data‐driven network‐based subgroups were identified using an unsupervised community detection algorithm within functional neural connectivity. Neuroimaging data collected during emotion processing (age 15) were extracted from a priori regions of interest linked to anxiety and depression. Symptoms were self‐reported at ages 15, 17, and 21 (during COVID‐19). During COVID‐19, participants reported on pandemic‐related economic adversity. Differences across subgroup networks were first examined, then subgroup membership and subgroup–adversity interaction were tested to predict change in symptoms over time.
Results
Two subgroups were identified: Subgroup A, characterized by relatively greater neural network variation (i.e., heterogeneity) and density with more connections involving the amygdala, subgenual cingulate, and ventral striatum; and the more homogenous Subgroup B, with more connections involving the insula and dorsal anterior cingulate. Accounting for initial symptoms, subgroup A individuals had greater increases in symptoms across time (β = .138, p = .042), and this result remained after adjusting for additional covariates (β = .194, p = .023). Furthermore, there was a subgroup–adversity interaction: compared with Subgroup B, Subgroup A reported greater anxiety during the pandemic in response to reported economic adversity (β = .307, p = .006), and this remained after accounting for initial symptoms and many covariates (β = .237, p = .021).
Conclusions
A subgrouping algorithm identified young adults who were susceptible to adversity using their personalized functional network profiles derived from a priori brain regions. These results highlight potential prospective neural signatures involving heterogeneous emotion networks that predict individuals at the greatest risk for anxiety when experiencing adverse events.
Antisocial behavior (AB), including aggression, violence, and theft, is thought be underpinned by abnormal functioning in networks of the brain critical to emotion processing, behavioral control, and ...reward-related learning. To better understand the abnormal functioning of these networks, research has begun to investigate the
connections between brain regions implicated in AB using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which assesses white-matter tract microstructure. This systematic review integrates findings from 22 studies that examined the relationship between white-matter microstructure and AB across development. In contrast to a prior hypothesis that AB is associated with greater diffusivity specifically in the uncinate fasciculus, findings suggest that adult AB is associated with greater diffusivity across a range of white-matter tracts, including the uncinate fasciculus, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, cingulum, corticospinal tract, thalamic radiations, and corpus callosum. The pattern of findings among youth studies was inconclusive with both higher and lower diffusivity found across association, commissural, and projection and thalamic tracts.
Background: The relationship between parenting and the development of antisocial behavior in children is well established. However, evidence for associations between dimensions of parenting and ...callous‐unemotional (CU) traits is mixed. As CU traits appear critical to understanding a subgroup of youth with antisocial behavior, more research addressing the link between early parenting and CU traits is needed.
Methods: The current study investigated longitudinal predictions between measures of harsh and positive parenting, and early CU behavior. Data from mother‐child dyads (N = 731; 49% female) were collected from a multi‐ethnic, high‐risk sample with young children, and included self‐reported and multi‐method observed parenting. CU behavior was assessed using a previously validated measure of deceitful‐callous behavior (Hyde et al., 2011).
Results: Results suggest that dimensions of harsh parenting, but not positive parenting, contribute to the development of child deceitful‐callous behavior. Nevertheless, deceitful‐callous behavior showed strong stability over time and the effects of harsh parenting, especially observed harshness, were modest.
Conclusions: The current findings have implications for developmental psychopathology and early interventions for antisocial behavior. The results also raise a number of issues about measuring emerging CU behavior in very young children, including the interrelation between parent perceptions and reports of child behavior, parent reactions, and the subsequent development of severe antisocial behavior.
Adolescent antisocial behavior (AB) is a public health concern due to the high financial and social costs of AB on victims and perpetrators. Neural systems involved in reward and loss processing are ...thought to contribute to AB. However, investigations into these processes are limited: few have considered anticipatory and consummatory components of reward, response to loss, nor whether associations with AB may vary by level of callous-unemotional (CU) traits.
A population-based community sample of 128 predominantly low-income youth (mean age = 15.9 years; 42% male) completed a monetary incentive delay task during fMRI. A multi-informant, multi-method latent variable approach was used to test associations between AB and neural response to reward and loss anticipation and outcome and whether CU traits moderated these associations.
AB was not associated with neural response to reward but was associated with reduced frontoparietal activity during loss outcomes. This association was moderated by CU traits such that individuals with higher levels of AB and CU traits had the largest reductions in frontoparietal activity. Co-occurring AB and CU traits were also associated with increased precuneus response during loss anticipation.
Findings indicate that AB is associated with reduced activity in brain regions involved in cognitive control, attention, and behavior modification during negative outcomes. Moreover, these reductions are most pronounced in youth with co-occurring CU traits. These findings have implications for understanding why adolescents involved in AB continue these behaviors despite severe negative consequences (e.g. incarceration).
Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking behavior, thought to be driven, in part, by heightened reward sensitivity. One challenge of studying reward processing in the field of developmental ...neuroscience is finding a task that activates reward circuitry, and is short, not too complex, and engaging for youth of a wide variety of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. In the present study, we tested a brief child-friendly reward task for activating reward circuitry in two independent samples of youth ages 7-19 years old enriched for poverty (study 1: n = 464; study 2: n = 27). The reward task robustly activated the ventral striatum, with activation decreasing from early to mid-adolescence and increasing from mid- to late adolescence in response to reward. This response did not vary by gender, pubertal development, or income-to-needs ratio, making the task applicable for a wide variety of populations. Additionally, ventral striatum activation to the task did not differ between youth who did and did not expect to receive a prize at the end of the task, indicating that an outcome of points alone may be enough to engage reward circuitry. Thus, this reward task is effective for studying reward processing in youth from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
This study examined developmentally salient risk and protective factors of adolescent substance use assessed during early childhood and early adolescence using a sample of 310 low-income boys. Child ...problem behavior and proximal family risk and protective factors (i.e., parenting and maternal depression) during early childhood, as well as child and family factors and peer deviant behavior during adolescence, were explored as potential precursors to later substance use during adolescence using structural equation modeling. Results revealed that early childhood risk and protective factors (i.e., child externalizing problems, mothers' depressive symptomatology, and nurturant parenting) were indirectly related to substance use at the age of 17 via risk and protective factors during early and middle adolescence (i.e., parental knowledge and externalizing problems). The implications of these findings for early prevention and intervention are discussed.
Examining the interplay of genes, experience and the brain is crucial to understanding psychopathology. We review the recent gene–environment interaction (G × E) and imaging genetics literature with ...the goal of developing models to bridge these approaches within single imaging gene–environment interaction (IG × E) studies. We explore challenges inherent in both G × E and imaging genetics and highlight studies that address these limitations. In specifying IG × E models, we examine statistical methods for combining these approaches, and explore plausible biological mechanisms (e.g. epigenetics) through which these conditional mechanisms can be understood. Finally, we discuss the potential contribution that IG × E studies can make to understanding psychopathology and developing more personalized and effective prevention and treatment.
Among high-risk youth, those with high levels of callous unemotional (CU) traits show more severe and chronic forms of antisocial behavior. Although ecological models have linked factors across ...multiple domains of risk to broader antisocial behavior development, fewer studies have adopted this approach in relation to understanding the unique development of CU traits. Further, a paucity of evidence exists from studies that have examined predictors of trajectories of CU traits. In the current study using data from the Pathways to Desistance data set, we examined prospective risk factors for CU traits trajectories modeled from ages 14 to 24. The sample included male adolescents who had interacted with the justice system (N = 1,170). CU traits were assessed using the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory. Risk factors were assessed at baseline via youth self-report across multiple domains of risk (individual, parenting, and broader contextual risk). Our results demonstrated higher risk factor scores across individual characteristics (higher anxiety and more substance use), parenting (higher harshness, and lower monitoring and knowledge), and broader contextual risk (more violence exposure) for youth with a "high" and stable CU traits trajectory. Adolescents with stable "high" CU traits likely need interventions capable of addressing and changing multiple aspects of their ecology across individual-, parent-, family-, and community-level targets.
Early callous-unemotional behaviours identify children at risk for antisocial behaviour. Recent work suggests that the high heritability of callous-unemotional behaviours is qualified by interactions ...with positive parenting.
To examine whether heritable temperament dimensions of fearlessness and low affiliative behaviour are associated with early callous-unemotional behaviours and whether parenting moderates these associations.
Using an adoption sample (n = 561), we examined pathways from biological mother self-reported fearlessness and affiliative behaviour to child callous-unemotional behaviours via observed child fearlessness and affiliative behaviour, and whether adoptive parent observed positive parenting moderated pathways.
Biological mother fearlessness predicted child callous-unemotional behaviours via earlier child fearlessness. Biological mother low affiliative behaviour predicted child callous-unemotional behaviours, although not via child affiliative behaviours. Adoptive mother positive parenting moderated the fearlessness to callous-unemotional behaviour pathway.
Heritable fearlessness and low interpersonal affiliation traits contribute to the development of callous-unemotional behaviours. Positive parenting can buffer these risky pathways.
Maternal intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure has been linked to negative parenting outcomes. Studies suggest that parenting stress is an intermediary between IPV exposure and parenting, though ...past work has relied on small, clinically- referred samples. Moreover, it is unclear if parenting is differentially affected by a mother’s recent versus past history of IPV exposure, or whether a mother’s childhood abuse history moderates the associations of IPV with parenting stress and parenting behaviors. The current study examines whether recent IPV, versus past IPV, has stronger associations with parenting stress and parenting behaviors and tests whether maternal abuse history moderates these associations. Using structural equation modeling, we tested relations between IPV (frequency and recency), parenting stress, and parenting behaviors cross-sectionally and longitudinally in a large community sample of IPV-exposed low-income Hispanic and African American mothers of children aged 0–14 years (
N
= 1159). We found that mothers who reported IPV exposure in the past year reported higher negative and lower positive parenting behaviors than mothers who reported less recent exposure. Further, we found that the frequency and timing of IPV exposure affected parenting indirectly through increased parenting stress. However, a childhood history of abuse did not appear to sensitize women to these effects. These findings suggest that psychological interventions aimed at reducing the subjective experience of parenting stress, as well as increased access to resources that reduce objective childcare burden, are important for promoting resilience among families exposed to violence.
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