School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208.
Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Sep 10;121(37):e2321965121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2321965121. Epub 2024 Sep 3.
The transition to adolescence is a critical period for mental health development. Socio-experiential environments play an important role in the emergence of depressive symptoms with some adolescents showing more sensitivity to social contexts than others. Drawing on recent developmental neuroscience advances, we examined whether hippocampal volume amplifies social context effects in the transition to adolescence. We analyzed 2-y longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study in a diverse sample of 11,832 youth (mean age: 9.914 y; range: 8.917 to 11.083 y; 47.8% girls) from 21 sites across the United States. Socio-experiential environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver's depressive symptoms, parental warmth, peer victimization, and prosocial school environment), hippocampal volume, and a wide range of demographic characteristics were measured at baseline. Youth's symptoms of major depressive disorder were assessed at both baseline and 2 y later. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses showed that negative social environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver's depressive symptoms, and peer victimization) and the absence of positive social environments (i.e., parental warmth and prosocial school environment) predicted greater increases in youth's depressive symptoms over 2 y. Importantly, left hippocampal volume amplified social context effects such that youth with larger left hippocampal volume experienced greater increases in depressive symptoms in more negative and less positive social environments. Consistent with brain-environment interaction models of mental health, these findings underscore the importance of families, peers, and schools in the development of depression during the transition to adolescence and show how neural structure amplifies social context sensitivity.
青春期是心理健康发展的关键时期。社会经验环境在抑郁症状的出现中起着重要作用，一些青少年比其他人对社会环境更为敏感。借鉴最近的发展神经科学进展，我们研究了海马体体积是否会放大青春期过渡期间的社会环境影响。我们分析了来自美国 21 个地点的 11832 名青少年（平均年龄：9.914 岁；范围：8.917 至 11.083 岁；47.8%为女孩）的《青少年大脑认知发展研究（ABCD）》2 年纵向数据。社会经验环境（即家庭冲突、主要照顾者的抑郁症状、父母的温暖、同伴侵害和支持性学校环境）、海马体体积以及各种人口统计学特征在基线时进行测量。青少年在基线和 2 年后均接受了重度抑郁症症状的评估。多层次混合效应线性回归分析表明，消极的社会环境（即家庭冲突、主要照顾者的抑郁症状和同伴侵害）和缺乏积极的社会环境（即父母的温暖和支持性学校环境）预示着青少年在 2 年内抑郁症状会有更大的增加。重要的是，左海马体体积放大了社会环境的影响，即左海马体体积较大的青少年在更消极和较少积极的社会环境中会经历更大的抑郁症状增加。与心理健康的大脑-环境相互作用模型一致，这些发现强调了家庭、同伴和学校在青春期过渡期间发展抑郁症的重要性，并展示了神经结构如何放大社会环境敏感性。
