Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neural responses to reward.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
; 19(1)2024 May 06.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38619118
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.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Reward
/
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
/
Residence Characteristics
/
Exposure to Violence
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Child
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States
Country of publication:
United kingdom