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- Title
Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neural responses to reward.
- Authors
Westerman, Heidi B.; Suarez, Gabriela L.; Richmond-Rakerd, Leah S.; Nusslock, Robin; Klump, Kelly L.; Burt, S. Alexandra; Hyde, Luke W.
- Abstract
A growing literature links socioeconomic disadvantage and adversity to brain function, including disruptions in reward processing. Less research has examined exposure to community violence (ECV) as a specific adversity related to differences in reward-related brain activation, despite the prevalence of community violence exposure for those living in disadvantaged contexts. The current study tested whether ECV was associated with reward-related ventral striatum (VS) activation after accounting for familial factors associated with differences in reward-related activation (e.g. parenting and family income). Moreover, we tested whether ECV is a mechanism linking socioeconomic disadvantage to reward-related activation in the VS. We utilized data from 444 adolescent twins sampled from birth records and residing in neighborhoods with above-average levels of poverty. ECV was associated with greater reward-related VS activation, and the association remained after accounting for family-level markers of disadvantage. We identified an indirect pathway in which socioeconomic disadvantage predicted greater reward-related activation via greater ECV, over and above family-level adversity. These findings highlight the unique impact of community violence exposure on reward processing and provide a mechanism through which socioeconomic disadvantage may shape brain function.
- Publication
Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 2024, Vol 19, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1749-5016
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/scan/nsae029