Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
Department of Pharmacy Practice, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2018 May;39(5):1982-1994. doi: 10.1002/hbm.23978. Epub 2018 Jan 22.
Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) experienced in early life is linked to a range of risk behaviors and diseases. Neuroimaging research indicates that this association is mediated by functional changes in corticostriatal reward systems that modulate goal-directed behavior, reward evaluation, and affective processing. Existing research has focused largely on adults and within-household measures as an index of SED, despite evidence that broader community-level SED (e.g., neighborhood poverty levels) has significant and sometimes distinct effects on development and health outcomes. Here, we test effects of both household- and community-level SED on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the ventral striatum (VS) in 100 racially and economically diverse children and adolescents (ages 6-17). We observed unique effects of household income and community SED on VS circuitry such that higher community SED was associated with reduced rsFC between the VS and an anterior region of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), whereas lower household income was associated with increased rsFC between the VS and the cerebellum, inferior temporal lobe, and lateral prefrontal cortex. Lower VS-mPFC rsFC was also associated with higher self-reported anxiety symptomology, and rsFC mediated the link between community SED and anxiety. These results indicate unique effects of community-level SED on corticostriatal reward circuitry that can be detected in early life, which carries implications for future interventions and targeted therapies. In addition, our findings raise intriguing questions about the distinct pathways through which specific sources of SED can affect brain and emotional development.
社会经济劣势（SED）在早期生活中经历与一系列风险行为和疾病有关。神经影像学研究表明，这种关联是通过调节目标导向行为、奖励评估和情感处理的皮质纹状体奖励系统的功能变化介导的。现有研究主要集中在成年人和家庭内部措施作为 SED 的指标上，尽管有证据表明更广泛的社区层面 SED（例如，邻里贫困水平）对发展和健康结果有重大影响，有时甚至有明显的影响。在这里，我们测试了家庭和社区层面 SED 对 100 名种族和经济多样化的儿童和青少年（6-17 岁）的腹侧纹状体（VS）静息状态功能连接（rsFC）的影响。我们观察到家庭收入和社区 SED 对 VS 回路的独特影响，即较高的社区 SED 与 VS 和内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）前部区域之间的 rsFC 降低有关，而较低的家庭收入与 VS 和小脑、下颞叶和外侧前额叶皮质之间的 rsFC 增加有关。较低的 VS-mPFC rsFC 也与较高的自我报告焦虑症状有关，rsFC 介导了社区 SED 和焦虑之间的联系。这些结果表明，社区层面 SED 对皮质纹状体奖励回路有独特的影响，可以在早期生命中检测到，这对未来的干预和靶向治疗具有重要意义。此外，我们的发现提出了一个有趣的问题，即特定来源的 SED 可以通过哪些独特途径影响大脑和情绪发育。
