History of conditioned reward association disrupts inhibitory control: an examination of neural correlates

The neural processes that support inhibitory control in the face of stimuli with a history of reward association are not yet well understood. Yet, the ability to flexibly adapt behavior to changing reward-contingency contexts is important for daily functioning and warrants further investigation. This study aimed to characterize neural and behavioral impacts of stimuli with a history of conditioned reward association on motor inhibitory control in healthy young adults by investigating group-level effects as well as individual variation in the ability to inhibit responses to stimuli with a reward history. Participants (N = 41) first completed a reward conditioning phase, during which responses to rewarded stimuli were associated with money and responses to unrewarded stimuli were not. Rewarded and unrewarded stimuli from training were carried forward as No-Go targets in a subsequent go/no-go task to test the effect of reward history on inhibitory control. Participants underwent functional brain imaging during the go/no-go portion of the task. On average, a history of reward conditioning disrupted inhibitory control. Compared to inhibition of responses to stimuli with no reward history, trials that required inhibition of responses to previously rewarded stimuli were associated with greater activity in frontal and striatal regions, including the inferior frontal gyrus, insula, striatum, and thalamus. Activity in the insula and thalamus during false alarms and in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during correctly withheld trials predicted behavioral performance on the task. Overall, these results suggest that reward history serves to disrupt inhibitory control and provide evidence for diverging roles of the insula and ventromedial prefrontal cortex while inhibiting responses to stimuli with a reward history.

Early adversity and children's emotion regulation: Differential roles of parent emotion regulation and adversity exposure

Exposure to early life adversity (ELA) is associated with increased rates of psychopathology and poor physical health. The present study builds on foundational work by Megan Gunnar identifying how ELA results in poor long-term outcomes through alterations in the stress response system, leading to major disruptions in emotional and behavioral regulation. Specifically, the present study tested the direct effects of ELA against the role of parent socialization to shed light on the mechanisms by which ELA leads to emotion regulation deficits. Children ages 4-7 years (N = 64) completed interviews about their experiences of deprivation and threat, a fear conditioning and extinction paradigm, and an IQ test. Parents of the children completed questionnaires regarding their own emotion regulation difficulties and psychopathology, their children's emotion regulation, and child exposure to adversity. At the bivariate level, greater exposure to threat and parental difficulties with emotion regulation were associated with poorer emotion regulation in children, assessed both via parental report and physiologically. In models where parental difficulties with emotion regulation, threat, and deprivation were introduced simultaneously, regression results indicated that parental difficulties with emotion regulation, but not deprivation or threat, continued to predict children's emotion regulation abilities. These results suggest that parental socialization of emotion is a robust predictor of emotion regulation tendencies in children exposed to early adversity.

Altered Neural Processing of Threat-Related Information in Children and Adolescents Exposed to Violence: A Transdiagnostic Mechanism Contributing to the Emergence of Psychopathology

OBJECTIVE

Exposure to violence in childhood is associated with increased risk for multiple forms of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. We evaluated how exposure to violence in early life influences neural responses to neutral and threat-related stimuli in childhood and adolescence, developmental variation in these associations, and whether these neural response patterns convey transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology over time.

METHOD

Participants were 149 youths (75 female and 74 male), aged 8 to 17 years (mean = 12.8, SD = 2.63), who had experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence (n = 76) or had never experienced violence (n = 73). Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning while passively viewing fearful, neutral, and scrambled faces presented rapidly in a block design without specific attentional demands. Internalizing and externalizing psychopathology were assessed concurrently with the scan and 2 years later and were used to compute a transdiagnostic general psychopathology factor (p factor).

RESULTS

Exposure to violence was associated with reduced activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and frontal pole (1,985 voxels, peak x, y, z = 6, 4, 40) when viewing fearful (versus scrambled) faces, and reduced activation in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and superior frontal gyrus (1,970 voxels, peak x, y, z = 16, 64, 10) when viewing neutral faces, but not amygdala activation or connectivity. Lower dACC response to fearful faces predicted increase in the p factor 2 years later (B = -0.186, p = .031) and mediated the association of violence exposure with longitudinal increases in the p factor.

CONCLUSION

Reduced recruitment of the dACC-a region involved in salience processing, conflict monitoring, and cognitive control-in response to threat-related cues may convey increased transdiagnostic psychopathology risk in youths exposed to violence.

Reward history impacts attentional orienting and inhibitory control on untrained tasks

It has been robustly shown that stimuli with reward history receive attentional priority. However, the majority of this research tests reward history effects on attentional bias using similar tasks for both the reward learning phase and the unrewarded testing phase, which limits our understanding of how the effects of reward history generalize beyond the trained tasks and mental sets. Across two new experiments, the current study addresses these issues by first associating reward with a stimulus in a visual search paradigm, and then testing value-driven effects of that stimulus in untrained and unrewarded tasks, including a cueing paradigm, a go/no-go task, and a delay discounting task. Results of Experiment 1 demonstrate that history of reward association in a visual search task generalizes to value-driven attentional bias in a different attention paradigm (i.e., cueing), indicating these effects are indeed attributable to imbued value that can transfer to other tasks beyond that in which the reward was trained. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrate that in addition to eliciting attentional orienting on untrained tasks, reward history can lead to better inhibitory control in the go/no-go task. We find no evidence for reward history effects in the delay discounting task. Together, these experiments demonstrate that when the reward association task is in the attention domain, reward history modulates attentional priority, and this effect generalizes to untrained and unrewarded tasks that utilize both spatial and nonspatial attention.

Examining cognitive control and reward interactions in adolescent externalizing symptoms

During adolescence, rapid development and reorganization of the dopaminergic system supports increasingly sophisticated reward learning and the ability to exert behavioral control. Disruptions in the ability to exert control over previously rewarded behavior may underlie some forms of adolescent psychopathology. Specifically, symptoms of externalizing psychopathology may be associated with difficulties in flexibly adapting behavior in the context of reward. However, the direct interaction of cognitive control and reward learning in adolescent psychopathology symptoms has not yet been investigated. The present study used a Research Domain Criteria framework to investigate whether behavioral and neuronal indices of inhibition to previously rewarded stimuli underlie individual differences in externalizing symptoms in N = 61 typically developing adolescents. Using a task that integrates the Monetary Incentive Delay and Go-No-Go paradigms, we observed a positive association between externalizing symptoms and activation of the left middle frontal gyrus during response inhibition to cues with a history of reward. These associations were robust to controls for internalizing symptoms and neural recruitment during inhibition of cues with no reward history. Our findings suggest that inhibitory control over stimuli with a history of reward may be a useful marker for future inquiry into the development of externalizing psychopathology in adolescence.

Network structure reveals clusters of associations between childhood adversities and development outcomes

Exposure to childhood adversity is common and associated with a host of negative developmental outcomes. The most common approach used to examine the consequences of adversity exposure is a cumulative risk model. Recently, we have proposed a novel approach, the dimensional model of adversity and psychopathology (DMAP), where different dimensions of adversity are hypothesized to impact health and well-being through different pathways. We expect deprivation to primarily disrupt cognitive processing, whereas we expect threat to primarily alter emotional reactivity and automatic regulation. Recent hypothesis-driven approaches provide support for these differential associations of deprivation and threat on developmental outcomes. However, it is not clear whether these patterns would emerge using data-driven approaches. Here we use a network analytic approach to identify clusters of related adversity exposures and outcomes in an initial study (Study 1: N = 277 adolescents aged 16-17 years; 55.1% female) and a replication (Study 2: N = 262 children aged 8-16 years; 45.4% female). We statistically compare our observed clusters with our hypothesized DMAP model and a clustering we hypothesize would be the result of a cumulative stress model. In both samples we observed a network structure consistent with the DMAP model and statistically different than the hypothesized cumulative stress model. Future work seeking to identify in the pathways through which adversity impacts development should consider multiple dimensions of adversity.

Reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume as a mechanism underlying stress sensitization to depression following childhood trauma

BACKGROUND

Stressful life events are more likely to trigger depression among individuals exposed to childhood adversity. However, the mechanisms underlying this stress sensitization remain largely unknown. Any such mechanism must be altered by childhood adversity and interact with recent stressful life events, magnifying their association with depression.

AIM

This study investigated whether reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume are potential mechanisms underlying stress sensitization following childhood violence exposure.

METHOD

A sample of 149 youth (aged 8-17 years), with (N = 75) and without (N = 74) exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence participated. Participants completed a structural MRI scan and assessments of depression. Approximately 2 years later, stressful life events were assessed along with depression symptoms in 120 participants (57 violence exposed).

RESULTS

Childhood violence exposure was associated with smaller hippocampal and amygdala volume. Stressful life events occurring during the follow-up period predicted worsening depression over time, and this association was magnified among those with smaller hippocampal and amygdala volumes. Significant moderated mediation models revealed the indirect effects of violence exposure on increasing depression over time through hippocampal and amygdala volumes, particularly among youths who experienced more stressful life events.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide evidence for reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume as potential mechanisms of stress sensitization to depression following exposure to violence. More broadly, these patterns suggest that hippocampal and amygdala-mediated emotional and cognitive processes may confer vulnerability to stressful life events among children who have experienced violence.

Cognitive Stimulation as a Mechanism Linking Socioeconomic Status With Executive Function: A Longitudinal Investigation

Executive functions (EF), including working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, vary as a function of socioeconomic status (SES), with children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds having poorer performance than their higher SES peers. Using observational methods, we investigated cognitive stimulation in the home as a mechanism linking SES with EF. In a sample of 101 children aged 60-75 months, cognitive stimulation fully mediated SES-related differences in EF. Critically, cognitive stimulation was positively associated with the development of inhibition and cognitive flexibility across an 18-month follow-up period. Furthermore, EF at T1 explained SES-related differences in academic achievement at T2. Early cognitive stimulation-a modifiable factor-may be a desirable target for interventions designed to ameliorate SES-related differences in cognitive development and academic achievement.

Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams

Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses1. The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data. This flexibility resulted in sizeable variation in the results of hypothesis tests, even for teams whose statistical maps were highly correlated at intermediate stages of the analysis pipeline. Variation in reported results was related to several aspects of analysis methodology. Notably, a meta-analytical approach that aggregated information across teams yielded a significant consensus in activated regions. Furthermore, prediction markets of researchers in the field revealed an overestimation of the likelihood of significant findings, even by researchers with direct knowledge of the dataset2-5. Our findings show that analytical flexibility can have substantial effects on scientific conclusions, and identify factors that may be related to variability in the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging. The results emphasize the importance of validating and sharing complex analysis workflows, and demonstrate the need for performing and reporting multiple analyses of the same data. Potential approaches that could be used to mitigate issues related to analytical variability are discussed.

Distinct aspects of the early environment contribute to associative memory, cued attention, and memory-guided attention: Implications for academic achievement

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with numerous aspects of cognitive development and disparities in academic achievement. The specific environmental factors that contribute to these disparities remain poorly understood. We used observational methods to characterize three aspects of the early environment that may contribute to SES-related differences in cognitive development: violence exposure, cognitive stimulation, and quality of the physical environment. We evaluated the associations of these environmental characteristics with associative memory, cued attention, and memory-guided attention in a sample of 101 children aged 60-75 months. We further investigated whether these specific cognitive abilities mediated the association between SES and academic achievement 18 months later. Violence exposure was specifically associated with poor associative memory, but not cued attention or memory-guided attention. Cognitive stimulation and higher quality physical environment were positively associated with cued attention accuracy, but not after adjusting for all other environmental variables. The quality of the physical environment was associated with memory-guided attention accuracy. Of the cognitive abilities examined, only memory-guided attention contributed to SES-related differences in academic achievement. These findings suggest specificity in how particular aspects of early environmental experience scaffold different types of attention and memory subserved by distinct neural circuits and shed light on a novel cognitive-developmental mechanism underlying SES-related disparities in academic achievement.

EEG power spectral slope differs by ADHD status and stimulant medication exposure in early childhood

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattentiveness. Efforts toward the development of a biologically based diagnostic test have identified differences in the EEG power spectrum; most consistently reported is an increased ratio of theta to beta power during resting state in those with the disorder, compared with controls. Current approaches calculate theta/beta ratio using fixed frequency bands, but the observed differences may be confounded by other relevant features of the power spectrum, including shifts in peak oscillation frequency and altered slope or offset of the aperiodic 1/f-like component of the power spectrum. In the present study, we quantify the spectral slope and offset, peak alpha frequency, and band-limited and band-ratio oscillatory power in the resting-state EEG of 3- to 7-yr-old children with and without ADHD. We found that medication-naive children with ADHD had higher alpha power, greater offsets, and steeper slopes compared with typically developing children. Children with ADHD who were treated with stimulants had comparable slopes and offsets to the typically developing group despite a 24-h medication-washout period. We further show that spectral slope correlates with traditional measures of theta/beta ratio, suggesting the utility of slope as a neural marker over and above traditional approaches. Taken with past research demonstrating that spectral slope is associated with executive functioning and excitatory/inhibitory balance, these results suggest that altered slope of the power spectrum may reflect pathology in ADHD.NEW & NOTEWORTHY This article highlights the clinical utility of comprehensively quantifying features of the EEG power spectrum. Using this approach, we identify, for the first time, differences in the aperiodic components of the EEG power spectrum in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and provide evidence that spectral slope is a robust indictor of an increase in low- relative to high-frequency power in ADHD.

Atypical Prefrontal-Amygdala Circuitry Following Childhood Exposure to Abuse: Links With Adolescent Psychopathology

Adverse childhood experiences have been associated with more negative coupling between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and amygdala, a brain network involved in emotion regulation in both children and adults. This pattern may be particularly likely to emerge in individuals exposed to threatening experiences during childhood (e.g., exposure to child abuse), although this has not been examined in prior research. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data on 57 adolescents during an emotion regulation task. Greater negative functional connectivity between vmPFC and amygdala occurred during viewing of negative compared to neutral images. This vmPFC-amygdala task-related functional connectivity was more negative in adolescents exposed to physical, sexual, or emotional abuse than those without a history of maltreatment and was associated with abuse severity. This pattern of more negative functional connectivity was associated with higher levels of externalizing psychopathology concurrently and 2 years later. Greater negative connectivity in the vmPFC-amygdala network during passive viewing of negative images may reflect disengagement of regulatory responses from vmPFC in situations eliciting strong amygdala reactivity, potentially due to stronger appraisals of threat in children exposed to early threatening environments. This pattern may be adaptive in the short term but place adolescents at higher risk of psychopathology later in life.

Difficulties with emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking child maltreatment with the emergence of psychopathology

Childhood maltreatment is associated with increased risk for most forms of psychopathology. We examine emotion dysregulation as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking maltreatment with general psychopathology. A sample of 262 children and adolescents participated; 162 (61.8%) experienced abuse or exposure to domestic violence. We assessed four emotion regulation processes (cognitive reappraisal, attention bias to threat, expressive suppression, and rumination) and emotional reactivity. Psychopathology symptoms were assessed concurrently and at a 2-year longitudinal follow-up. A general psychopathology factor (p factor), representing co-occurrence of psychopathology symptoms across multiple internalizing and externalizing domains, was estimated using confirmatory factor analysis. Maltreatment was associated with heightened emotional reactivity and greater use of expressive suppression and rumination. The association of maltreatment with attention bias varied across development, with maltreated children exhibiting a bias toward threat and adolescents a bias away from threat. Greater emotional reactivity and engagement in rumination mediated the longitudinal association between maltreatment and increased general psychopathology over time. Emotion dysregulation following childhood maltreatment occurs at multiple stages of the emotion generation process, in some cases varies across development, and serves as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking child maltreatment with general psychopathology.

Deprivation and threat, emotion dysregulation, and psychopathology: Concurrent and longitudinal associations

Maltreatment increases risk for psychopathology in childhood and adulthood, thus identifying mechanisms that influence these associations is necessary for future prevention and intervention. Emotion dysregulation resulting from maltreatment is one potentially powerful mechanism explaining risk for psychopathology. This study tests a conceptual model that distinguishes deprivation and threat as distinct forms of exposure with different pathways to psychopathology. Here we operationalize threat as exposure to physical and/or sexual abuse and deprivation as exposure to neglect. We test the hypothesis that threat and deprivation differentially predict use of avoidant strategies and total regulation. Data were drawn from the Longitudinal Studies on Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN study; N = 866), which followed high-risk children from age 4 to 18. At age 6, children and their parents reported on adversity exposure. Case records documented exposure to abuse and neglect. At 18, adolescents reported on regulation strategies and psychopathology. Regression analyses indicated that greater exposure to threat, but not deprivation, predicted greater use of avoidant strategies in adolescence. Moreover, avoidance partially mediated the longitudinal association between exposure to threat in early childhood and symptoms of internalizing psychopathology in adolescence. Results suggest that abuse and neglect differentially predict regulation strategy use and that regulation strategy use predicts psychopathology.

Altered development of hippocampus-dependent associative learning following early-life adversity

Little is known about how childhood adversity influences the development of learning and memory and underlying neural circuits. We examined whether violence exposure in childhood influenced hippocampus-dependent associative learning and whether differences: a) were broad or specific to threat cues, and b) exhibited developmental variation. Children (n = 59; 8-19 years, 24 violence-exposed) completed an associative learning task with angry, happy, and neutral faces paired with objects during fMRI scanning. Outside the scanner, participants completed an associative memory test for face-object pairings. Violence-exposed children exhibited broad associative memory difficulties that became more pronounced with age, along with reduced recruitment of the hippocampus and atypical recruitment of fronto-parietal regions during encoding. Violence-exposed children also showed selective disruption of associative memory for threat cues regardless of age, along with reduced recruitment of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) during encoding in the presence of threat. Broad associative learning difficulties may be a functional consequence of the toxic effects of early-life stress on hippocampal and fronto-parietal cortical development. Difficulties in the presence of threat cues may result from enhanced threat processing that disrupts encoding and short-term storage of associative information in the IPS. These associative learning difficulties may contribute to poor life outcomes following childhood violence exposure.

Brain structure mediates the association between socioeconomic status and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater risk for symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One mechanism through which SES may confer risk for ADHD is by influencing brain structure. Alterations to cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume have been associated with low SES and with the presence of ADHD across multiple studies. The current study examined whether cortical thickness, surface area or subcortical volume mediate the associations between SES and ADHD in youth 3-21 years old (N = 874) from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics Study. Freesurfer was used to estimate cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Parents reported on demographics, family SES, ADHD diagnoses and the presence of child attention problems. Statistical mediation was assessed using a bootstrap resampling procedure. Controlling for parental ADHD, child age, gender, birth weight and scanner, children in low SES families were more likely to be in the ADHD group. Consistent with previous reports in this sample, low SES was associated with reduced surface area across the frontal lobe and reduced subcortical volume in the amygdala, cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Of these regions, a significant indirect effect of SES on ADHD status through subcortical volume was observed for the left cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.004, 0.022), the right cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.006, 0.025), and the right caudate (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.022). Environmentally mediated changes in the cerebellum and the caudate may be neurodevelopmental mechanisms explaining elevated risk of ADHD in children in low SES families.

Differential Associations of Deprivation and Threat With Cognitive Control and Fear Conditioning in Early Childhood

Early-life adversity (ELA) is strongly associated with risk for psychopathology. Within adversity, deprivation, and threat may lead to psychopathology through different intermediary pathways. Specifically, deprivation, defined as the absence of expected cognitive and social inputs, is associated with lower performance on complex cognitive tasks whereas threatening experiences, defined as the presence of experiences that reflect harm to the child, are associated with atypical fear learning and emotional processes. However, distinct associations of deprivation and threat on behavioral outcomes have not been examined in early childhood. The present study examines how deprivation and threat are associated with cognitive and emotional outcomes in early childhood. Children 4–7 years old completed behavioral tasks assessing cognitive control (N = 58) and fear conditioning (N = 45); deprivation and threat were assessed using child interview and parent questionnaires. Regression analyses were performed including deprivation and threat scores and controls for age, gender, and IQ. Because this is the first time these variables have been examined in early childhood, interactions with age were also examined. Deprivation, but not threat was associated with worse performance on the cognitive control task. Threat, but not deprivation interacted with age to predict fear learning. Young children who experienced high levels of threat showed evidence of fear learning measured by differential skin conductance response even at the earliest age measured. In contrast, for children not exposed to threat, fear learning emerged only in older ages. Children who experienced higher levels of threat also showed blunted reactivity measured by amplitude of skin conductance response to the reinforced stimuli regardless of age. Results suggest differential influences of deprivation and threat on cognitive and emotional outcomes even in early childhood. Future work should examine the neural mechanisms underlying these behavioral changes and link changes with increased risk for negative outcomes associated with adversity exposure, such as psychopathology.

Development of Prefrontal Cortical Connectivity and the Enduring Effect of Learned Value on Cognitive Control

Inhibitory control, the capacity to suppress an inappropriate response, is a process employed for guiding action selection in the service of goal-directed behavior. Under neutral circumstances, inhibitory control success improves from childhood to adulthood and has been associated with developmental shifts in functional activation and connectivity of the PFC. However, the ability to exercise inhibitory control is challenged in certain contexts by including appetitive cues, a phenomenon that may be particularly pronounced in youths. Here, we examine the magnitude and temporal persistence of learned value's influence on inhibitory control in a cross-sectional sample of 8- to 25-year-olds. Participants first underwent conditioning of a motor approach response to two initially neutral cues, with one cue reinforced with monetary reward and the other with no monetary outcome. Subsequently, during fMRI, participants reencountered these cues as no-go targets in a nonreinforced go/no-go paradigm. Although the influence of learned value increasingly disrupted inhibitory control with increasing age, in young adults this pattern remitted over the course of the task, whereas during adolescence the impairing effect of reward history persisted. Successful no-go performance to the previously rewarded target was related to greater recruitment of the right inferior frontal gyrus and age-related increase in functional connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the ventromedial PFC for the previously rewarded no-go target over the control target. Together, results indicate the complex influence of value on goals over development relies upon the increased coordination of distinct higher-order regions in the PFC.

Prefrontal and Hippocampal Structure Predict Statistical Learning Ability in Early Childhood

Statistical learning can be used to gain sensitivity to many important regularities in our environment, including structure that is foundational to language and visual perception. As yet, little is known about how statistical learning takes place in the human brain, especially in children's developing brains and with regard to the broader neurobiology of learning and memory. We therefore explored the relationship between statistical learning and the thickness and volume of structures that are traditionally implicated in declarative and procedural memory, focusing specifically on the left inferior PFC, the hippocampus, and the caudate during early childhood (ages 5-8.5 years). We found that the thickness of the left inferior frontal cortex and volume of the right hippocampus predicted statistical learning ability in young children. Importantly, these regions did not change in thickness or volume with age, but the relationship between learning and the right hippocampus interacted with age such that older children's hippocampal structure more strongly predicted performance. Overall, the data show that children's statistical learning is supported by multiple neural structures that are more broadly implicated in learning and memory, especially declarative memory (hippocampus) and attention/top-down control (the PFC).

Dimensions of deprivation and threat, psychopathology, and potential mediators: A multi-year longitudinal analysis

Prior research demonstrates a link between exposure to childhood adversity and psychopathology later in development. However, work on mechanisms linking adversity to psychopathology fails to account for specificity in these pathways across different types of adversity. Here, we test a conceptual model that distinguishes deprivation and threat as distinct forms of childhood adversity with different pathways to psychopathology. Deprivation involves an absence of inputs from the environment, such as cognitive and social stimulation, that influence psychopathology by altering cognitive development, such as verbal abilities. Threat includes experiences involving harm or threat of harm that increase risk for psychopathology through disruptions in social-emotional processing. We test the prediction that deprivation, but not threat, increases risk for psychopathology through altered verbal abilities. Data were drawn from the Child Development Project (N = 585), which followed children for over a decade. We analyze data from assessment points at age 5, 6, 14, and 17 years. Mothers completed interviews at age 5 and 6 on exposure to threat and deprivation experiences. Youth verbal abilities were assessed at age 14. At age 17, mothers reported on child psychopathology. A path analysis model tested longitudinal paths to internalizing and externalizing problems from experiences of deprivation and threat. Consistent with predictions, deprivation was associated with risk for externalizing problems via effects on verbal abilities at age 14. Threat was associated longitudinally with both internalizing and externalizing problems, but these effects were not mediated by verbal abilities. Results suggest that unique developmental mechanisms link different forms of adversity with psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record

Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescent Girls Following an Interpersonal Rejection

Failures in emotion regulation, especially as a result of interpersonal stress, are implicated as transdiagnostic risk factors for psychopathology. This study examines the effects of an experimentally timed targeted interpersonal rejection on emotion reactivity and regulation in typically developing adolescent girls. Girls ( n = 33, ages 9-16 years, M = 12.47, SD = 2.20) underwent fMRI involving a widely used emotion regulation task. The emotion task involves looking at negative stimuli and using cognitive reappraisal strategies to decrease reactions to negative stimuli. Participants also engaged in a social evaluation task, which leads participants to believe a preselected peer was watching and evaluating the participant. We subsequently told participants they were rejected by this peer and examined emotion reactivity and regulation before and after this rejection. Adolescent girls evidence greater reactivity via higher self-reported emotional intensity and greater amygdala activation to negative stimuli immediately after (compared with before) the rejection. Self-reported emotional intensity differences before and after rejection were not observed during regulation trials. However, on regulation trials, girls exhibited increased prefrontal activation in areas supporting emotion regulation after compared with before the rejection. This study provides evidence that a targeted rejection increases self-report and neural markers of emotion reactivity and that girls increase prefrontal activation to regulate emotions after a targeted rejection.

Violence exposure and neural systems underlying working memory for emotional stimuli in youth

Violence exposure during childhood is common and associated with poor cognitive and academic functioning. However, little is known about how violence exposure influences cognitive processes that might contribute to these disparities, such as working memory, or their neural underpinnings, particularly for cognitive processes that occur in emotionally salient contexts. We address this gap in a sample of 54 participants aged 8 to 19 years (50% female), half with exposure to interpersonal violence. Participants completed a delayed match to sample task for emotional faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Violence-exposed youth performed worse than controls on happy and neutral, but not angry, trials. In whole-brain analysis, violence-exposed youth had reduced activation in the left middle frontal gyrus and right intraparietal sulcus during encoding and the left superior temporal sulcus and temporal-parietal junction during retrieval compared to control youth. Reduced activation in the left middle frontal gyrus during encoding and the left superior temporal sulcus during retrieval mediated the association between violence exposure and task performance. Violence exposure influences the frontoparietal network that supports working memory as well as regions involved in facial processing during working memory for emotional stimuli. Reduced neural recruitment in these regions may explain atypical patterns of cognitive processing seen among violence-exposed youth, particularly within emotional contexts.

Foster care promotes adaptive functioning in early adolescence among children who experienced severe, early deprivation

BACKGROUND

Experiences in early life lay the foundation for later development and functioning. Severe psychosocial deprivation, as experienced by children in early institutional care, constitutes an adverse experience with long-term negative consequences. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project sought to examine the effects of foster care as an alternative to institutional care for abandoned infants in Romanian institutions.

METHODS

At a mean age of 22 months, institutionalized children were randomized to foster care or care as usual. At age 12 years, we followed-up with 98 of these children (50 randomized to foster care), as well as assessed 49 never institutionalized comparison children. Adaptive functioning was assessed across seven domains-mental health, physical health, substance use, risk-taking behavior, family relations, peer relations, and academic performance. Children at or above the threshold for adaptive functioning in at least six of seven domains were classified as having overall adaptive functioning in early adolescence.

RESULTS

Among all children who had experienced severe early deprivation, 40% exhibited adaptive functioning. Children randomized to foster care were significantly more likely to exhibit adaptive functioning at age 12 years than children in the care as usual condition (56% vs. 23%). In support of external validity, children who met the threshold for adaptive functioning at age 12 years had higher IQs and were more physiologically responsive to stress. Among children randomized to foster care, children placed prior to age 20 months were more likely to meet the threshold for adaptive functioning than those placed after this age (79% vs. 46%).

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides causal evidence that placing children into families following severe deprivation increases the likelihood of adaptive functioning in early adolescence.