School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2023 Aug 2;18(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsad037.
Adolescence is often associated with an increase in psychopathology. Although previous studies have examined how family environments and neural reward sensitivity separately play a role in youth's emotional development, it remains unknown how they interact with each other in predicting youth's internalizing symptoms. Therefore, the current research took a biopsychosocial approach to examine this question using two-wave longitudinal data of 9353 preadolescents (mean age = 9.93 years at T1; 51% boys) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Using mixed-effects models, results showed that higher family conflict predicted youth's increased internalizing symptoms 1 year later, whereas greater ventral striatum (VS) activity during reward receipt predicted reduced internalizing symptoms over time. Importantly, there was an interaction effect between family conflict and VS activity. For youth who showed greater VS activation during reward receipt, high family conflict was more likely to predict increased internalizing symptoms. In contrast, youth with low VS activation during reward receipt showed high levels of internalizing symptoms regardless of family conflict. The findings suggest that youth's neural reward sensitivity is a marker of susceptibility to adverse family environments and highlight the importance of cultivating supportive family environments where youth experience less general conflict within the family.
青春期通常与精神病理学的增加有关。尽管先前的研究已经研究了家庭环境和神经奖励敏感性如何分别在年轻人的情绪发展中发挥作用，但尚不清楚它们如何相互作用以预测年轻人的内化症状。因此，当前的研究采用生物心理社会方法，使用来自青少年大脑认知发展研究的 9353 名青春期前儿童（T1 时的平均年龄为 9.93 岁；51%为男孩）的两波纵向数据来检验这一问题。使用混合效应模型，结果表明，较高的家庭冲突预示着 1 年后年轻人内化症状的增加，而在奖励获得期间更大的腹侧纹状体（VS）活动则预示着内化症状随时间的减少。重要的是，家庭冲突和 VS 活动之间存在交互作用。对于在奖励获得期间表现出更大 VS 激活的年轻人来说，高家庭冲突更有可能预测内化症状的增加。相比之下，在奖励获得期间 VS 激活较低的年轻人无论家庭冲突如何，都表现出较高的内化症状。研究结果表明，年轻人的神经奖励敏感性是易受不良家庭环境影响的标志，并强调了培养支持性家庭环境的重要性，让年轻人在家庭中体验到较少的一般冲突。
