Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Division of Developmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2025 Jan;249:106072. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.106072. Epub 2024 Sep 23.
Exposure to psychosocial adversity (PA) is associated with poor behavioral, physical, and mental health outcomes in adulthood. As these outcomes are related to alterations in developmental processes, growing evidence suggests that deficits in executive functions-inhibitory control in particular-may in part explain this relationship. However, literature examining the development of inhibitory control has been based on children in higher-resource environments, and little is known how low-resource settings might exacerbate the link between inhibitory control and health outcomes. In this context, we collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data during a Go/No-Go inhibitory control task and PA variables for 68 children aged 5 to 7 years living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, an area with a high prevalence of PA. The children's mothers completed behavioral questionnaires to assess the children's PA and their own PA. Whole-brain activation underlying inhibitory control was examined using the No-Go versus Go contrast, and associations with PA variables were assessed using whole-brain regressions. Childhood neglect was associated with weaker activation in the right posterior cingulate, whereas greater family conflict, economic stress, and maternal PA factors were associated with greater activation in the left medial frontal gyrus, right superior and middle frontal gyri, and left cingulate gyrus. These data suggest that neural networks supporting inhibitory control processes may vary as a function of exposure to different types of PA, particularly between those related to threat and deprivation. Furthermore, increased activation in children with greater PA may serve as a compensatory mechanism, allowing them to maintain similar behavioral task performance.
暴露于心理社会逆境(PA)与成年后行为、身体和心理健康结果不佳有关。由于这些结果与发育过程的改变有关,越来越多的证据表明,执行功能缺陷——尤其是抑制控制——可能部分解释了这种关系。然而,检查抑制控制发展的文献基于资源更丰富环境中的儿童,并且对于资源匮乏的环境如何可能加剧抑制控制与健康结果之间的联系知之甚少。在这种情况下,我们在达卡,孟加拉国为 68 名 5 至 7 岁的儿童收集了功能磁共振成像数据,这些儿童生活在一个心理社会逆境高发地区,进行了 Go/No-Go 抑制控制任务和 PA 变量的测量。这些儿童的母亲完成了行为问卷,以评估儿童的 PA 和自己的 PA。使用 No-Go 与 Go 对比检查了抑制控制的全脑激活情况,并使用全脑回归评估了与 PA 变量的关联。童年忽视与右侧后扣带回的激活较弱有关,而家庭冲突、经济压力和母亲 PA 因素与左侧额内回、右侧额上回和中回以及左侧扣带回的激活增加有关。这些数据表明,支持抑制控制过程的神经网络可能会根据暴露于不同类型的 PA 而变化,尤其是与威胁和剥夺有关的 PA。此外,PA 较高的儿童的大脑激活增加可能是一种补偿机制,使他们能够保持类似的行为任务表现。