Neural correlates of social exclusion during adolescence: understanding the distress of peer rejection

Neural Sensitivity to Peer Feedback and Depressive Symptoms: Moderation by Executive Function

Theories of adolescent development suggest that elevated neural sensitivity to social evaluation confers tradeoffs for adolescents' wellbeing, promoting adaptation to changing social contexts but increasing risk for emotional distress and depression. This study investigated whether the association between neural processing of peer feedback and depressive symptoms depends on teacher-reported executive function (EF) ability in adolescent girls. Girls showed activation to negative and positive peer feedback in regions implicated in social-emotional processing that interacted with EF to predict depressive symptoms. Specifically, activation predicted more depression in youth with poorer EF but less depression in youth with better EF, suggesting that the impact of increased social sensitivity may depend on youths' ability to regulate this sensitivity in adaptive ways.

Dimensional Affective Sensitivity to Hormones across the Menstrual Cycle (DASH-MC): A transdiagnostic framework for ovarian steroid influences on psychopathology

Fluctuations in progesterone (P4) and estradiol (E2) across the menstrual cycle can exert direct effects on biological systems implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders and represent a key biological source of variability in affective, cognitive, and behavioral disorders. Although these cyclical symptoms may be most readily identified when they occur exclusively in relation to the menstrual cycle, as in DSM-5 premenstrual dysphoric disorder, symptom changes of similar magnitude occur in a larger proportion of people with ongoing psychiatric disorders. Studies investigating cyclical regulation of brain and behavior often produce inconsistent results, which may be attributed to a lack of focus on specific hormonal events and individual differences in related sensitivities. We propose a transdiagnostic Dimensional Affective Sensitivity to Hormones across the Menstrual Cycle (DASH-MC) framework, postulating that atypical neural responses to several key hormonal events provoke specific temporal patterns of affective and behavioral change across the menstrual cycle. We review prospective and experimental evidence providing initial support for these dimensions, which include (1) luteal-onset negative affect caused by a sensitivity to E2 or P4 surges (mediated by neuroactive metabolites such as allopregnanolone), typified by irritability and hyperarousal; (2) perimenstrual-onset negative affect caused by a sensitivity to low or falling E2, typified by low mood and cognitive dysfunction; and (3) preovulatory-onset positive affect dysregulation caused by a sensitivity to E2 surges, typified by harmful substance use and other risky reward-seeking. This multidimensional, transdiagnostic framework for hormone sensitivity can inform more precise research on ovarian steroid regulation of psychopathology, including further mechanistic research, diagnostic refinement, and precision psychiatry treatment development. Additionally, given the high rates of hormone sensitivity across affective disorders, the DASH-MC may guide broader insights into the complex neurobiological vulnerabilities driving female-biased affective risk, as well as potential triggers and mechanisms of affective state change in psychiatric disorders.

Paediatric motor difficulties and internalising problems: an integrative review on the environmental stress hypothesis

The current study aims to provide an in-depth analysis and extension of the Environmental Stress Hypothesis (ESH) framework, focusing on the complex interplay between poor motor skills and internalising problems like anxiety and depression. Using an integrative research review methodology, this study synthesises findings from 38 articles, both empirical and theoretical, building upon previous foundational works. The hypothesis posits that poor motor skills serve as a primary stressor, leading to internalising problems through various secondary stressors. A rigorous comparison of data was conducted, considering study design, findings, and methodologies-while exploring variables such as age, sex, and comorbidities. The study also enhances the ESH framework by including intrapersonal stressors and introducing resource buffers, including optimism and familial support as additional influencing factors. This multi-level approach yields a more nuanced and comprehensive ESH framework, highlighting the need for future studies to consider variables that intersect across multiple domains and how the relationship between poor motor skills and internalising problems may vary across different life stages.

Get out of my head: social evaluative brain states carry over into post-feedback rest and influence remembering how others view us

Learning how others perceive us helps us tune our behavior to form adaptive relationships. But which perceptions stick with us? And when in the learning process are they codified in memory? We leveraged a popular television series-The Office-to answer these questions. Prior to their functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) session, viewers of The Office reported which characters they identified with, as well as which characters they perceived another person (i.e. counterpart) was similar to. During their fMRI scan, participants found out which characters other people thought they and the counterpart were like, and also completed rest scans. Participants remembered more feedback inconsistent with their self-views (vs. views of the counterpart). Although neural activity while encoding self-inconsistent feedback did not meaningfully predict memory, returning to the inconsistent self feedback during subsequent rest did. During rest, participants reinstated neural patterns engaged while receiving self-inconsistent feedback in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). DMPFC reinstatement also quadratically predicted self-inconsistent memory, with too few or too many reinstatements compromising memory performance. Processing social feedback during rest may impact how we remember and integrate the feedback, especially when it contradicts our self-views.

Do we empathize humanoid robots and humans in the same way? Behavioral and multimodal brain imaging investigations

Humanoid robots have been designed to look more and more like humans to meet social demands. How do people empathize humanoid robots who look the same as but are essentially different from humans? We addressed this issue by examining subjective feelings, electrophysiological activities, and functional magnetic resonance imaging signals during perception of pain and neutral expressions of faces that were recognized as patients or humanoid robots. We found that healthy adults reported deceased feelings of understanding and sharing of humanoid robots' compared to patients' pain. Moreover, humanoid robot (vs. patient) identities reduced long-latency electrophysiological responses and blood oxygenation level-dependent signals in the left temporoparietal junction in response to pain (vs. neutral) expressions. Furthermore, we showed evidence that humanoid robot identities inhibited a causal input from the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex to the left temporoparietal junction, contrasting the opposite effect produced by patient identities. These results suggest a neural model of modulations of empathy by humanoid robot identity through interactions between the cognitive and affective empathy networks, which provides a neurocognitive basis for understanding human-robot interactions.

Pain of Threatened Self: Explicit and Implicit Self-Esteem, Cortisol Responses to a Social Threat and Pain Perception

Background: Rejection, injustice, and exclusion from meaningful interpersonal relationships are often extremely painful and stress-generating experiences. This study aimed to define the role of explicit and implicit self-esteem in pain perception as a component of the physiological-psychological system that regulates the body's response to stress associated with the threat of social rejection. Methods: In total, 360 individuals participated in this study. The measurement of cortisol in saliva, the assessment of pain thresholds using thermal stimuli, the IAT to assess implicit self-esteem, and a questionnaire on global self-esteem and social pain were used. The study included three measurements: baseline and 15 and 45 min after the application of a laboratory socially threatening stimulus (the Trier Social Stress Test). Results: People experiencing chronic social pain (CSP) are more likely to have fragile self-esteem, higher pain thresholds, and tend to experience reduced pain tolerance in situations of acute social threat than people without CSP experience. In people with CSP and fragile self-esteem, after the introduction of a social threat, an increase in pain tolerance was observed along with a longer-lasting increase in cortisol levels. Conclusions: Fragile self-esteem, along with feelings of chronic exclusion, injustice, and rejection, may prolong stress reactions and produce a hypoalgesic effect.

Chronic bullying victimization and life satisfaction among children from multicultural families in South Korea: Heterogeneity by immigrant mothers' country of origin

BACKGROUND

Despite existing literature on the link between bullying victimization and psychological well-being, little is known about the potential lasting negative effects of chronic bullying victimization, especially among children from multicultural families (CMF).

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the longitudinal association between chronic bullying victimization and life satisfaction among CMF in Korea, and further investigated whether this association differs by immigrant mothers' country of origin.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

This study utilized data from the Multicultural Adolescents Panel Study (MAPS) 2011-2019, a nationally representative longitudinal study of CMF in Korea who were between the ages of 9 and 12 at baseline (N = 1375).

METHODS

Fixed effects models were employed to address potential bias resulting from unobserved time-invariant confounders. Three theoretical models were proposed to examine the trajectory patterns of change in life satisfaction among chronically bullied children: cumulative effects, immediate-sustained effects, and short-lived effects models.

RESULTS

The longitudinal trajectories of change in life satisfaction associated with chronic bullying victimization were consistent with an immediate-sustained effects model. Heterogeneous patterns in the association by mothers' country of origin were observed. A cumulative effects model was supported for children with Southeast Asian mothers, indicating that chronic bullying victimization leads to a cumulative decrease in life satisfaction. For children with Chinese and Japanese mothers, the results supported either immediate-sustained or short-lived effects models.

CONCLUSIONS

Efforts to improve the psychological well-being of CMF should consider the potential long-term risk of chronic bullying victimization, particularly among youth with mothers from Southeast Asia.

Self-esteem in children and adolescents with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analytic review

Meta-analytic methods were used to examine global and domain-specific (i.e., academic, social, behavioral) self-esteem in children and adolescents with and without ADHD. Potential moderators of effect size heterogeneity were also examined via meta-regressions within a three-level approach. Findings from 49 aggregated global self-esteem effect sizes (ADHDN = 2500, TDN = 9448), 12 academic self-esteem effect sizes (ADHDN = 386, TDN = 315), 11 social self-esteem effect sizes (ADHDN = 258, TDN = 254), and 8 behavioral self-esteem effect sizes (ADHDN = 231, TDN = 211) suggest that children and adolescents with ADHD experience moderate global (ES = 0.46, p < .001), academic (ES = 0.60, p = .009), and social (ES = 0.67, p = .001) self-esteem impairments compared to children and adolescents without the disorder. The aggregated behavioral self-esteem effect size (ES = 0.20, p = .54), however, was not significant, and the global self-esteem effect size was markedly smaller compared to effect sizes for the academic and social domains. Further, examination of potential moderators of effect size heterogeneity indicated null effects for medication status, diagnostic complexity, informant, age, sex, comorbid psychopathology, and self-esteem dimension. Collectively, findings suggest that children and adolescents with ADHD do not hold a ubiquitous negative self-perception of difficulties across academic, social, and behavioral domains of functioning, and unexamined domains that are distal to ADHD may serve to bolster global self-esteem.

Associations between humiliation, shame, self-harm and suicidality among adolescents and young adults: A systematic review

BACKGROUND

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people worldwide. Research indicates that negative social contexts involving familial and peer relationships have far-reaching influences on levels of suicidality in later life. While previous systematic reviews have focused on evaluating associations between negative life events such as abuse and bullying in childhood and subsequent suicidality, this systematic review examines the prevalence of, and association between the processes of humiliation and shame in later self-harm, suicidal ideation, and suicide among adolescents and young adults.

METHODS

A systematic literature search of databases including MEDLINE, Web of Science Core Collection, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Embase was conducted to identify potential studies. ProQuest was searched to identify relevant grey literature research. A combination of MESH terms and keywords was used. All original quantitative studies published in English that examined the prevalence, or association between humiliation or shame and suicidal behaviours and/or death by suicide were included. Studies were assessed for methodological quality using Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools. The protocol was registered with the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) [CRD42022289843].

RESULTS

Narrative synthesis was performed. A total of 33 studies reporting the prevalence of, or association between humiliation (n = 10) or shame (n = 23) and suicidal thoughts/behaviours were included. The prevalence of humiliation among those with any suicidality ranged from 18% to 28.1%, excluding an outlier (67.1%), with two studies presenting a significant association between humiliation and self-harm in their fully adjusted analyses. The studies that outlined humiliation and suicidal thinking (intent/suicide plan) had no association after adjustment for confounders. For shame, half of the studies found an association in adjusted models (n = 10), and this was evident for both suicidal ideation and self-harm.

CONCLUSION

To our knowledge, this is the first study to attempt a systematic review on this topic. The dearth of research in this field of enquiry is reflective of unique challenges associated with assessments of humiliation and shame in various clinical settings amongst adolescent and young adult populations. Nonetheless, given the importance and relevance of the psychological imprint of humiliation in youth morbidity and mortality in the field of mental health, it is timely to attempt such a systematic review. In light of the associated role of humiliation and shame in self-harm and suicidality among young people, we recommend that these processes need to be explored further via prospective studies and assessed as part of a comprehensive bio-psycho-social assessment when focusing on life stressors for adolescent and young adults presenting with suicidality to emergency departments and mental health services.

Social play exclusion model in adolescent rats: Monitoring locomotor and emotional behavior associated with social play and examining c-Fos expression in the brain

The exclusion of social play within an adolescent group interferes with learning and the acquisition of essential social behavior during development and can cause modulations in the social brain areas. However, despite the importance of social play in adolescence, an in-depth explanation of its physiological mechanisms is limited because of the lack of experimental animal models that embody social play exclusion in human society. To determine the mechanism of social play in adolescence, we identified differences in emotional behavior and brain activity in animal models of social play exclusion that mimicked human society. Emotional changes in the social play exclusion and non-exclusion groups were examined by tracking social play-related social interaction behavior, social play-related space preference, social play-related locomotor behavior, and anxiety-like behavior using a behavioral data analysis program. Differences in brain activity among groups were identified using immunohistochemical staining. During the social play exclusion model, the rats preferred the partition zone to the other areas in the test chamber. The exclusion group preferred the partition and the center zone over the non-exclusion group. When comparing before and after the social play exclusion, the exclusion group showed a decrease in mobility and an increase in anxiety-like behavior compared to the non-exclusion group. We found that c-Fos expression in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the exclusion group was lower than that in the non-exclusion group, whereas c-Fos expression in the lateral habenula (LHb) of the exclusion group was higher than that in the non-exclusion group. Taken together, in adolescence, exclusion from social play with peers can increase anxiety-like behavior in the exclusion group and change the neuronal activity of the DG and LHb, suggesting that exclusion from social play is linked to modifications in the DG and LHb, which are regions associated with mood regulation.

Which social media platforms matter and for whom? Examining moderators of links between adolescents' social media use and depressive symptoms

INTRODUCTION

Despite extensive research on social media and risks for mental health, not enough is known about individual differences in these risks.

METHODS

The present study, with data collected from 2018 to 2020, investigated the association between social media use (total and for specific platforms) and depressive symptoms in a sample of 237 American adolescents (Mage  = 15.10; SD = 0.49; 51.1% girls and 48.5% boys). We investigated several moderators: gender, self-esteem, personality, and negative reactions to social media. Covariates were gender, timing of the follow-up (pre vs. during the pandemic), and depressive symptoms a year earlier.

RESULTS

Results indicated that greater total time spent on social media was associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms. This effect held for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube (but not Snapchat, Facebook, or Twitter). Several moderated effects were found. Twitter was associated with more depressive symptoms for girls but not boys. More frequent Instagram use was linked to more depressive symptoms for less or average-level extraverted teens but not for more extraverted teens, suggesting extraversion may be protective. More frequent TikTok use was associated with more depressive symptoms, particularly for teens who said they have more or average-level negative reactions to social media a year earlier.

CONCLUSIONS

This study suggests that certain adolescents may be at increased risk for serious mental health challenges, like elevated depressive symptoms, when using TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter more frequently, underscoring the importance of examining individual differences and particular social media platforms.

You can't play with us: First-person ostracism affects infants' behavioral reactivity

Ostracism negatively affects fundamental psychological needs, induces physiological and behavioral changes, and modulates the processing of social information in adults. Yet little is known about children and preverbal infants' responses to first-person experiences of ostracism. The current study aimed to explore the efficacy of a triadic ball-tossing game in manipulating social inclusion and ostracism with 13-month-old infants (N = 84; 44% males; mostly White; tested from 2019 to 2022) by developing an observational coding system. Infants' behaviors were recorded while participating in a ball-tossing game where they were either included or ostracized from the game. Ostracized, but not included, infants showed an increase in negative emotionality and involvement behaviors, thus suggesting that behavioral responses to being ostracized emerge early in life.

Stereotypes in the classroom's air: Classroom racial stereotype endorsement, classroom engagement, and STEM achievement among Black and White American adolescents

Initiatives promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in predominantly White contexts, including STEM fields, have primarily relied on approaches to increase the representation of minoritized individuals. However, an increase in the representation of minoritized individuals is only one step of the process, as the present study suggests that explicit beliefs about particular racial groups' abilities also matter. The present article examined whether classroom racial stereotype endorsement about science and math disadvantaged Black American adolescents relative to their White American peers. Across two longitudinal studies with 533 and 1,189 adolescents (N-adolescents = 1722; N-classrooms = 86; 45% Black American, 55% White American; 51% females; M-age = 13-14), classroom pro-White/anti-Black stereotype endorsement in the fall term predicted better science and math achievement scores for White American adolescents and lower science and math achievement scores for Black American adolescents at the end of the academic year. Student- and teacher-reported student engagement in science and math classrooms mediated the longitudinal relations between classroom pro-White/anti-Black stereotype endorsement and students' achievement scores. Results suggest that classrooms may be important conduits for communicating racial stereotypes that create racially hostile STEM learning environments. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Using a longitudinal sample of 1722 adolescents enrolled in 86 classrooms, the present study examined the consequences of classroom racial stereotype endorsement during adolescence. White American adolescents demonstrated favorable achievement scores in science and math when their classmates endorsed traditional, or pro-White/anti-Black, stereotypes. Black American adolescents showed worse achievement scores in science and math when their classmates endorsed pro-White/anti-Black stereotypes. Classroom engagement mediated the longitudinal relations between classroom pro-White/anti-Black stereotype endorsement and achievement scores for both Black and White American adolescents.

Does depression affect the association between prosocial behavior and anxiety? A cross-sectional study of students in China

Background

A growing number of studies have suggested that adolescents' prosocial behavior can protect against depression and anxiety. It is known that anxiety and depression are often comorbid. However, it remains unclear if when depression is present, prosocial behavior remains protective against anxiety, and if when anxiety is present, prosocial behavior remains protective against depression. The purpose of this study was to determine the association of anxiety and depressive with prosocial behavior.

Methods

A large representative sample of middle-school students was recruited for a cross-sectional study and completed standardized instruments (the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI), Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders-Child version (SCARED-C), and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)). We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the protective effect of prosocial behavior against anxiety when depression was present.

Results

A survey of 3,510 students was conducted, and the final analysis included 3,169 students, comprising 1,616 boys (51.0%) and 1,553 girls (49.0%), with a mean age of 13.09 years (SD = 1.31, range 11-16).The prevalence rates of anxiety and depression in early adolescents were 31.6 and 16.7%, respectively. More than two-thirds of depressed adolescents had comorbid anxiety, while more than one-third of anxious adolescents had comorbid depression. Regression models showed that compared with depressed adolescents, adolescents without depressive symptoms exhibited a significant negative correlation between prosocial behaviors and anxiety and depression (β = -0.01, p > 0.01, β = -0.06, p > 0.01; β = -0.11, p < 0.01, and β = -0.17, p < 0.01). There was no difference in the relationship between prosocial behavior and depression between anxious and non-anxious adolescents (p > 0.05).

Conclusion

Anxiety and depression are common in adolescence and are often comorbid disorders. However, the comorbidity is not symmetrical. Specifically, the protective effect of prosocial behavior against anxiety is weaker in depressed adolescents. Findings are discussed in light of related research and theory, and insights for intervention programs and future research are presented.

Subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex Reactivity to Rejection Vs. Acceptance Predicts Depressive Symptoms among Adolescents with an Anxiety History

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this study was to examine whether neural sensitivity to negative peer evaluation conveys risk for depression among youth with a history of anxiety. We hypothesized that brain activation in regions that process affective salience in response to rejection, relative to acceptance, from virtual peers would predict depressive symptoms 1 year later and would be associated with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) reports of peer connectedness.

METHOD

Participants were 38 adolescents ages 11-16 (50% female) with a history of anxiety, recruited from a previous clinical trial. The study was a prospective naturalistic follow-up of depressive symptoms assessed 2 years (Wave 2) and 3 years (Wave 3) following treatment. At Wave 2, participants completed the Chatroom Interact Task during neuroimaging and 16 days of EMA.

RESULTS

Controlling for depressive and anxiety symptoms at Wave 2, subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC; β = .39, p = .010) activation to peer rejection (vs. acceptance) predicted depressive symptoms at Wave 3. SgACC activation to rejection (vs. acceptance) was highly negatively correlated with EMA reports of connectedness with peers in daily life (r = - .71, p < .001).

CONCLUSION

Findings suggest that elevated sgACC activation to negative, relative to positive, peer evaluation may serve as a risk factor for depressive symptoms among youth with a history of anxiety, perhaps by promoting vigilance or reactivity to social evaluative threats. SgACC activation to simulated peer evaluation appears to have implications for understanding how adolescents experience their daily social environments in ways that could contribute to depressive symptoms.

Reciprocal associations between peer victimization and depressive symptoms among Chinese children and adolescents: Between- and within-person effects

Peer victimization is detrimental to child mental health. Research has indicated a reciprocal relationship between peer victimization and mental health problems. Yet limited evidence was from children and adolescents in China. The present study used the random intercepts cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to examine both between-person and within-person associations between peer victimization and depressive symptoms among Chinese children and adolescents. Participants were 1205 Chinese students (Mage  = 11.27 years; ranged from 9 to 15 years; SD = 1.75; 55% boys) who completed four surveys (Time 1 to Time 4) between 2017 and 2019 on demographics, peer victimization, and depressive symptoms. At the between-person level, peer victimization was positively associated with depressive symptoms. Controlling for between-person effects, RI-CLPM suggested positive within-person effects from peer victimization to depressive symptoms across adjacent waves. The model also suggested a positive within-person effect from Time 2 depressive symptoms to Time 3 peer victimization. The multi-group analysis showed that these effects did not differ by gender, age, or subjective socioeconomic status. Peer victimization and depression appear to be reciprocally related at the transitioning period between late childhood and early adolescence in Chinese students. Mental health interventions should attend to peer victimization for children and adolescents in China.

Peer facilitation of emotion regulation in adolescence

Emotion regulation is particularly important for adolescents as they undergo normative developmental changes in affective systems and experience heightened risk for psychopathology. Despite a high need for emotion regulation during adolescence, commonly studied emotion regulation strategies like cognitive reappraisal are less beneficial for adolescents than adults because they rely on neural regions that are still developing during this period (i.e., lateral prefrontal cortex). However, adolescence is also marked by increased valuation of peer relationships and sensitivity to social information and cues. In the present review, we synthesize research examining emotion regulation and peer influence across development to suggest that sensitivity to peers during adolescence could be leveraged to improve emotion regulation for this population. We first discuss developmental trends related to emotion regulation at the level of behavior and brain in adolescents, using cognitive reappraisal as an exemplar emotion regulation strategy. Next, we discuss social influences on adolescent brain development, describing caregiver influence and increasing susceptibility to peer influence, to describe how adolescent sensitivity to social inputs represents both a window of vulnerability and opportunity. Finally, we conclude by describing the promise of social (i.e., peer-based) interventions for enhancing emotion regulation in adolescence.

Neural Reactivity to Social Punishment Predicts Future Engagement in Nonsuicidal Self-injury Among Peer-Rejected Adolescents

BACKGROUND

Rates of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) increase dramatically in adolescence. Affective reactivity and adverse social experiences have been linked to NSSI, but less is known about whether these factors may separately or interactively predict NSSI, especially longitudinally. This study combined functional magnetic resonance imaging and a sociometric measure to test whether a combination of neural (e.g., amygdala) reactivity to social punishment and peer-nominated peer acceptance/rejection predicts NSSI longitudinally in adolescence. Amygdala reactivity was examined as a potential neural marker of affective reactivity to social punishment, which may heighten NSSI risk in contexts of social adversity.

METHODS

One hundred twenty-five adolescents (63 female) completed a social incentive delay task during neuroimaging and school-based peer nominations to measure peer acceptance/rejection. NSSI engagement was assessed at baseline and 1-year follow-up.

RESULTS

Greater amygdala reactivity to social punishment predicted greater NSSI engagement 1 year later among adolescents with high peer rejection. This effect for the amygdala was specific to social punishment (vs. reward) and held when controlling for biological sex and pubertal development. Exploratory analyses found that ventral striatum reactivity to social reward and punishment similarly interacted with peer rejection to predict NSSI but that amygdala connectivity with salience network regions did not.

CONCLUSIONS

Amygdala reactivity to social punishment, in combination with high peer rejection, may increase NSSI risk in adolescence, possibly via heightened affective reactivity to adverse social experiences. Objective measures of neurobiological and social risk factors may improve prediction of NSSI, while therapeutic approaches that target affective reactivity and increase prosocial skills may protect against NSSI in adolescence.

Neural activation to peer acceptance and rejection in relation to concurrent and prospective depression risk in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls

Neurobiological sensitivity to peer interactions is a proposed marker of risk for adolescent depression. We investigated neural response to peer rejection and acceptance in relation to concurrent and prospective depression risk in adolescent and pre-adolescent girls. Participants were 76 girls (Mage=13, 45% racial/ethnic minorities) varying in depression risk: 22 with current major depressive disorder (MDD), 30 at High Risk for MDD based on parental history, and 24 at Low Risk with no psychiatric history. Girls participated in the Chatroom-Interact task-involving rejection and acceptance feedback from fictitious peers-while undergoing functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging. Activation in response to peer rejection and acceptance was extracted from regions of interest. Depressive symptoms were assessed at 6- and 12-month follow-up. Girls with MDD showed blunted left subgenual anterior cingulate response to acceptance versus girls in High and Low Risk groups. Girls in the High Risk group showed greater right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ) and right anterior insula (AI) activation to both acceptance and rejection versus girls in the MDD (rTPJ) and Low Risk (rTPJ, AI) groups. Greater rTPJ response to rejection was associated with fewer depressive symptoms at 12-months and mediated the association between High Risk group status and 12-month depressive symptoms; greater rTPJ response to acceptance mediated the association between High Risk and increased 12-month depressive symptoms. Our finding of associations between altered neural response to peer interactions and concurrent and prospective depression risk/resilience highlights the importance of neural underpinnings of social cognition as risk and compensatory adaptations along the pathway to depression.

The role of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex on voluntary emotion regulation of social pain

The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) is highly engaged in emotion regulation of social pain. However, there is still lack of both inhibition and excitement evidence to prove the causal relationship between this brain region and voluntary emotion regulation. This study used high-frequency (10 Hz) and low-frequency (1 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to separately activate or inhibit the rVLPFC in two groups of participants. We recorded participants' emotion ratings as well as their social attitude and prosocial behaviors following emotion regulation. Also, we used eye tracker to record the changes of pupil diameter to measure emotional feelings objectively. A total of 108 healthy participants were randomly assigned to the activated, inhibitory or sham rTMS groups. They were required to accomplish three sequential tasks: the emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal) task, the favorability rating task, and the donation task. Results show that the rVLPFC-inhibitory group reported more negative emotions and showed larger pupil diameter while the rVLPFC-activated group showed less negative emotions and reduced pupil diameter during emotion regulation (both compared with the sham rTMS group). In addition, the activated group gave more positive social evaluation to peers and donated more money to a public welfare activity than the rVLPFC-inhibitory group, among which the change of social attitude was mediated by regulated emotion. Taken together, these findings reveal that the rVLPFC plays a causal role in voluntary emotion regulation of social pain and can be a potential brain target in treating deficits of emotion regulation in psychiatric disorders.

Sensory processing sensitivity and social pain: a hypothesis and theory

Sensory-processing sensitivity (SPS) defined, as a personality trait, seems to be characterized by emotional sensitivity, and stronger reactivity to both external and internal stimuli. SPS can represent a risk factor for developing clinical conditions during childhood and adolescence. This personality trait is not to be considered a pathological clinical condition, however, can expose to greater environmental vulnerability. In particular, the recent studies about SPS can be contextualized to social situations that evoke traumatic and stressful emotional responses such as social exclusion. We hypothesize that highly sensitive people (HSP) are more vulnerable to social exclusion and social pain. This hypothesis could help structure new educational and intervention models designed to improve coping strategies and promote HSP's psychophysical and social well-being.

A Mixed-Methods Approach to Refining and Measuring the Construct of Positive Risk-Taking in Adolescence

Adolescence is a peak period for risk-taking, but research has largely overlooked positive manifestations of adolescent risk-taking due to ambiguity regarding operationalization and measurement of positive risk-taking. We address this limitation using a mixed-methods approach. We elicited free responses from contemporary college students (N = 74, Mage  = 20.1 years) describing a time they took a risk. Qualitative analysis informed the construction of a self-report positive risk-taking scale, which was administered to a population-based sample of adolescents (N = 1,249, Mage  = 16 years) for quantitative validation and examination of associations with normative and impulsive personality. Sensation seeking predicted negative and positive risk-taking, whereas extraversion and openness were predominantly related to positive risk-taking. Results provide promising evidence for a valid measure of adolescents' engagement in positive risks.

Neural correlates associated with conformity in adolescent and young adult men

Social influence affects us throughout our lives, shaping our attitudes, behaviors, and preferences. Thus, the current study aimed to examine whether key age groups (adolescence versus young adulthood) were associated with differences in neural correlates associated with processing social feedback and conformity (i.e., conflict detection, positive valuation, and mentalizing) among young men. We recruited 153 participants across 5 studies, who completed a social influence task during an fMRI scan. Overall, participants were more likely to conform by changing their ratings when misaligned with others, and adolescents were more likely to conform when misaligned (compared to aligned) with others compared to young adults. Further, we found that adolescents showed increased activity in mentalizing (TPJ, dmPFC) and positive valuation regions (VS, vmPFC), compared to young adults, in response to misalignment with others. In contrast, young adults showed increased activity in conflict detection regions (AI, dACC) when exposed to feedback that they were misaligned with others and when conforming to that feedback. Overall, our results offer initial evidence that adolescent and young adult men engage different neural processes when they find out they are misaligned with others and when conforming to the recommendations of others, and this difference appears to track with brain responses in conflict detection, mentalizing and value regions. DATA STATEMENT: Raw data and analysis codes are available upon request.

The impact of sociality and affective valence on brain activation: A meta-analysis

Thirty years of neuroimaging reveal the set of brain regions consistently associated with pleasant and unpleasant affect in humans-or the neural reference space for valence. Yet some of humans' most potent affective states occur in the context of other humans. Prior work has yet to differentiate how the neural reference space for valence varies as a product of the sociality of affective stimuli. To address this question, we meta-analyzed across 614 social and non-social affective neuroimaging contrasts, summarizing the brain regions that are consistently activated for social and non-social affective information. We demonstrate that across the literature, social and non-social affective stimuli yield overlapping activations within regions associated with visceromotor control, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, anterior cingulate cortex and insula. However, we find that social processing differs from non-social affective processing in that it involves additional cortical activations in the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulum that have been associated with mentalizing and prediction. A Bayesian classifier was able to differentiate unpleasant from pleasant affect, but not social from non-social affective states. Moreover, it was not able to classify unpleasantness from pleasantness at the highest levels of sociality. These findings suggest that highly social scenarios may be equally salient to humans, regardless of their valence.

Thumbs up or thumbs down: neural processing of social feedback and links to social motivation in adolescent girls

Adolescence is a period of rapid biological and psychological development, characterized by increasing emotional reactivity and risk-taking, especially in peer contexts. Theories of adolescent neural development suggest that the balance in sensitivity across neural threat, reward and regulatory systems contributes to these changes. Building on previous research, this study used a novel social feedback task to explore activation and functional connectivity in the context of social threat and reward in a sample of mid-adolescent girls (n = 86, Mage = 16.32). When receiving negative peer feedback, adolescents showed elevated activation in, and amygdala connectivity with, social processing regions [e.g. medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ)]. When receiving positive feedback, adolescents showed elevated activation in social and reward (e.g. mPFC and ventromedial prefrontal cortex) processing regions and less striatum-cerebellum connectivity. To understand the psychological implications of neural activation and co-activation, we examined associations between neural processing of threat and reward and self-reported social goals. Avoidance goals predicted elevated amygdala and striatum connectivity with social processing regions [e.g. medial temporal gyrus (MTG)], whereas approach goals predicted deactivation in social processing regions (e.g. MTG/TPJ and precuneus), highlighting the importance of considering individual differences in sensitivity to social threat and reward in adolescence.

Adolescents' neural reactivity to acute psychosocial stress: dysfunctional regulation habits are linked to temporal gyrus response

Mid-adolescence is a critical time for the development of stress-related disorders and it is associated with significant social vulnerability. However, little is known about normative neural processes accompanying psychosocial stress at this time. Previous research found that emotion regulation strategies critically influence the relationship between stress and the development of psychiatric symptoms during adolescence. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined neural responses to acute stress and analyzed whether the tendency to use adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies is related to neural and autonomic stress responses. Results show large linear activation increases from low to medium to high stress levels mainly in medial prefrontal, insulae and temporal areas. Caudate and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, neural areas related to reward and affective valuations, showed linearly decreasing activation. In line with our hypothesis, the current adolescent neural stress profile resembled social rejection and was characterized by pronounced activation in insula, angular and temporal cortices. Moreover, results point to an intriguing role of the anterior temporal gyrus. Stress-related activity in the anterior temporal gyrus was positively related to maladaptive regulation strategies and stress-induced autonomic activity. Maladaptive coping might increase the social threat and reappraisal load of a stressor, relating to higher stress sensitivity of anterior temporal cortices.

An ethologically based view into human fear

The quality of the defensive response to a threat depends on the elements that trigger the fear response. The current classification system of phobias does not account for this. Here, we analyze the fear-eliciting elements and discern the different types of fears that originate from them. We propose Pain, Disgust, Vasovagal response, Visual-vestibular and postural interactions, Movement and Speed, Distance and Size, Low and mid-level visual features, Smell, and Territory and social status. We subdivide phobias according to the fear-eliciting elements most frequently triggered by them and their impact on behavior. We discuss the implications of a clinical conceptualization of phobias in humans by reconsidering the current nosology. This conceptualization will facilitate finding etiological factors in defensive behavior expression, fine-tuning exposure techniques, and challenging preconceived notions of preparedness. This approach to phobias leads to surprising discoveries and shows how specific responses bear little relation to the interpretation we might later give to them. Dividing fears into their potentially fear-eliciting elements can also help in applying the research principles formulated by the Research Domain Criteria initiative.

A longitudinal mediation study of peer victimization and resting-state functional connectivity as predictors of development of adolescent psychopathology

Background

Peer victimization (PV) is associated with alterations in neural responses in regions subserving emotional regulatory processes and with increased risk of psychopathology during adolescence. The present study examined the longitudinal mediating effects of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between adolescent PV and subsequent internalizing (depression and anxiety), and externalizing (conduct and hyperactivity/inattention) symptoms.

Methods

151 adolescents (baseline mean age 12-14; 54% males) were assessed and imaged three times during a five-year period. We focused on rsFC of a priori determined Regions-of-Interest (ROIs) guided by the literature (i.e., amygdala, anterior and posterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and medial prefrontal cortex). Multilevel mediation (MLM) analyses simultaneously examined the between-person, concurrent within-person, and lagged within-person associations between PV and internalizing/externalizing symptoms through changes in couplings of the amygdala with the other four ROIs. All models controlled for the effects of self-reported childhood maltreatment and sex differences.

Results

An increased rsFC of the amygdala-posterior insula significantly mediated the lagged within-person association of PV and internalizing symptoms (β = 0.144; 95% CI [0.018, 0.332]). This effect was significant regardless of childhood maltreatment, concurrent externalizing symptoms, and sex differences. The rsFC did not mediate the relationship between PV and externalizing symptoms.

Conclusions

Results of this study suggest that adolescent PV may lead to long-lasting maladaptive neural communication between emotional response and sensory perception of pain (i.e., bottom-up emotion regulation) and that these neural responses may serve as unique markers for increased internalizing symptoms that appear in later adolescence in peer-victimized youth. These findings have implications for interventions targeting internalizing symptoms in victimized adolescents.

Peer Adversity Predicts Interpersonal Needs in Adolescent Girls

The need to belong (NTB) and need for approval (NFA) are fundamental interpersonal needs vital to social development. Although these needs are universal, individual differences in the strength of these needs likely emerge from critical social experiences. In particular, given the growing salience of peer social evaluation and belonging across adolescence, interpersonal needs during this stage may be strongly tied to both early and recent experiences in the peer group. The aim of the present study was to examine the contribution of lifetime and recent peer adversity to both general and situation-specific interpersonal needs in a sample of adolescent girls (N = 89, Mage  = 15.85). Results revealed that recent peer adversity predicted avoidance-oriented NFA, whereas a significant interaction between lifetime and recent peer adversity predicted approach-oriented NFA. Although neither lifetime nor recent peer adversity predicted individual differences in NTB, both predicted threats to interpersonal needs in the context of a laboratory manipulation of social exclusion. Specifically, both lifetime and recent peer adversity predicted greater need-threat prior to the exclusion, but only individuals who had experienced lifetime peer adversity continued to display ongoing high levels of threatened interpersonal needs.

The relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity is modulated by spontaneous activities of the dACC

Although it has been found that self-esteem and self-concept clarity are positively correlated, self-determination theory shows that the positive relationship might be lowered for individuals whose basic psychological needs are chronically thwarted. The exact neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity are still not fully understood. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) plays an important role in monitoring basic psychological needs, considering that it is more active when some basic psychological needs are actually or potentially thwarted. To better understand the neural mechanisms underlying the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity, we investigated the differences in the relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity among healthy adults with different levels of spontaneous activities of the dACC using rs-fMRI combined with amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF). As expected, the results showed that the positive relationship between self-esteem and self-concept clarity was modulated by the ALFF value of the right dACC, which indicated that the positive relationship was significant when the ALLF value of the right dACC was lower, but the positive relationship was not significant when the ALFF value of the right dACC was higher. The modulating roles of right dACC might also reflect that the individuals with higher ALFF value of dACC might experience chronically thwarted relatedness of basic psychological needs, which means the more disturbed by thwarting relatedness information in individuals, the lower positive relationship emerged.

Modeling sensitivity to social threat in adolescent girls: A psychoneurometric approach

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project's success rests on the assumption that constructs and data can be integrated across units of analysis and developmental stages. We adopted a psychoneurometric approach to establish biobehavioral liability models of sensitivity to social threat, a key component of potential threat that is particularly salient to the development of adolescent affective psychopathology. Models were derived from measures across four units of analysis in a community sample (n = 129) of 11- to 13-year-old girls oversampled for shy/fearful temperament. To test the ecological validity of derived factors, they were then related to real-world socioaffective processes in peer interactions over a 16-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. Our results indicate that measures (i.e., amygdala reactivity to negative social feedback, eye-tracking bias toward social threat, parent- and adolescent-reports of social threat sensitivity) formed unit-specific factors, rather than one unified factor. These findings suggest that these factors were largely unrelated. Amygdala response to social punishment and attention bias toward threatening faces predicted real-world experiences with peers, suggesting that vigilance toward potentially threatening social information could be a mechanism through which vulnerable youth come to experience their peer interactions more negatively. We discuss measurement challenges confronting efforts to quantify developmentally sensitive RDoC constructs across units of analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining the common and specific grey matter abnormalities in childhood maltreatment and peer victimisation

BACKGROUND

Early-life interpersonal stress, particularly childhood maltreatment, is associated with neurobiological abnormalities. However, few studies have investigated the neural effects of peer victimisation.

AIMS

This study examines common and specific associations between childhood maltreatment, peer victimisation and brain structural alterations in youths.

METHOD

Grey matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness data were collected from 105 age- and gender-matched youths (age range: 17-21 years). Region-of-interest and whole-brain analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

For the region-of-interest analyses, the childhood maltreatment group had smaller GMV than controls in left inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral anterior insula, postcentral and lingual regions, which were associated with greater emotional abuse, along with smaller insular GMV than the peer victimisation group, who had smaller left lingual and postcentral GMV than controls. At the whole-brain level, both childhood maltreatment and peer victimisation groups had smaller GMV than controls in a cluster comprising left post/precentral, inferior frontal gyrus, insula, superior parietal and supramarginal gyri. The peer victimisation group alone had increased cortical thickness in a cluster comprising left superior frontal, anterior cingulate and medial orbitofrontal gyri, which was related to greater cyberbullying.

CONCLUSIONS

Early-life interpersonal stress is associated with common structural alterations of the inferior frontal-limbic, sensory and lingual regions involved in cognitive control, emotion and sensory processing. The findings of childhood-maltreatment-related reduced anterior insular GMV and peer-victimisation-related increased cortical thickness in the left medial prefrontal-anterior cingulate cluster underscore the distinctive negative effects of childhood maltreatment and peer victimisation, and suggest that peer victimisation, particularly cyberbullying, could be as detrimental as childhood maltreatment.

Different Roles of the Left and Right Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Cognitive Reappraisal: An Online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

The ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) plays a pivotal role in cognitive reappraisal. Previous studies suggested a functional asymmetry of the bilateral VLPFC, but the evidence is still insufficient during cognitive reappraisal. In this study, we conducted an online single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (spTMS) to investigate the causal and distinct roles of the left and right VLPFC in reappraisal. Participants were instructed to reappraise (down-regulate) or attend to pictures depicting social exclusion scenarios while the spTMS was applied over the left or right VLPFC of the participants’ brains. The results showed that spTMS of either the left or the right VLPFC would increase reappraisal difficulty. Meanwhile, the outcome of reappraisal (measured by self-reported negative feelings) significantly deteriorated when the right (but not the left) VLPFC was temporally interrupted by spTMS, while the verbal fluency during oral reporting of the reappraisal strategy was significantly reduced when the left VLPFC was interrupted by spTMS. Taken together, these findings provide causal evidence for the involvement of left and right VLPFC with distinct roles: while the left VLPFC is responsible for the linguistic especially semantic process of generating and selecting appraisals according to the goal of emotion regulation, the right VLPFC plays a critical role in inhibiting inappropriate negative emotions and thoughts generated by the effective scenarios. These findings deepen our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanism of emotion regulation.

Brain Responses to Peer Feedback in Social Media Are Modulated by Valence in Late Adolescence

Previous studies have examined the neural correlates of receiving negative feedback from peers during virtual social interaction in young people. However, there is a lack of studies applying platforms adolescents use in daily life. In the present study, 92 late-adolescent participants performed a task that involved receiving positive and negative feedback to their opinions from peers in a Facebook-like platform, while brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Peer feedback was shown to activate clusters in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (STG/STS), and occipital cortex (OC). Negative feedback was related to greater activity in the VLPFC, MPFC, and anterior insula than positive feedback, replicating previous findings on peer feedback and social rejection. Real-life habits of social media use did not correlate with brain responses to negative feedback.

You Are Not Alone!

Abstract. Experiencing ostracism is a painful situation that can urge a desire to restore social bonds. However, few studies have investigated the conditions under which it leads to ingroup identification. In three studies using minimal groups ( N = 611), we have investigated the consequences of coexperiencing ostracism for group identification and well-being. In Study 1a and 1b ( N = 171; N = 211), the results showed that sharing a common experience of ostracism with an ingroup member increases ingroup identification but does not improve psychological needs during the ostracism experience. In Study 2 ( N = 230), we replicated our results on identification and showed that sharing ostracism fosters psychological closeness with the partner ostracized but does not moderate need recovery.

Does losing money truly hurt? The shared neural bases of monetary loss and pain

Both monetary loss and pain have been studied for decades, but evidence supporting the relationship between them is still lacking. We conducted a meta‐analysis to explore the overlapping brain regions between monetary loss and pain, including physical pain and social pain. Regardless of the type of pain experienced, activation of the anterior insula was a shared neural representation of monetary loss and pain. The network representation pattern of monetary loss was more similar to that of social pain than that of physical pain. In conclusion, our research provided evidence of the common neural correlates of monetary loss and pain.

Differential neural sensitivity to social inclusion and exclusion in adolescents in foster care

OBJECTIVES

Adolescents in foster care may exhibit differential patterns of brain functioning that contribute to their pervasive socioemotional challenges. However, there has been limited investigation of implicated neural processes, particularly in the social domain. Thus, the current study investigated neural responses to exclusionary and inclusionary peer interactions in adolescents in foster-care.

METHODS

Participants comprised adolescents aged 11-18 years in foster care (N = 69) and a community sample (N = 69). They completed an fMRI adaptation of Cyberball, a virtual ball-throwing paradigm, that included periods of exclusion and over-inclusion. To investigate neural sensitivity to peer social experiences, we quantified neural responses that scaled with consecutive inclusionary and exclusionary interactions (using parametric modulators).

RESULTS

Relative to the community sample, adolescents in foster care exhibited increasing response to consecutive exclusionary events in lateral prefrontal regions and decreasing response to consecutive inclusionary events in the intraparietal sulcus and temporo-occipital cortex. Further, exploratory analyses revealed that dorsolateral prefrontal activation to exclusion was related to externalizing problems, particularly in the foster care sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlight greater neural sensitivity to exclusionary, and lesser sensitivity to inclusionary, peer interactions in adolescents in foster care. Engagement of prefrontal clusters may reflect greater salience and emotion regulatory processes during exclusion, while parietal and temporal clusters may reflect reduced attention and behavioural engagement during inclusion. Thus foster care involvement is associated with broad changes in neural responses during peer interactions, and further these potentially relate to externalizing problems that have been identified in this vulnerable population.

Neural Response to Social Exclusion Moderates the Link Between Adolescent Anxiety Symptoms and Substance Use

BACKGROUND

Substance use (SU) typically increases from middle to late adolescence. Anxiety is one factor associated with greater SU, although variability in who uses substances remains. Some models suggest that brain-based susceptibility markers could reveal which adolescents are at a higher risk for psychopathology, but it is unknown whether these individual differences attenuate or accentuate the association between anxiety and elevated SU even if normative. This study addressed this gap by testing whether neural response to social exclusion moderates the association between anxiety symptoms and increased SU from middle to late adolescence.

METHODS

Participants were 181 Mexican-origin adolescents (48% female; 16-17 years old) who completed a social exclusion task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan and filled out questionnaires about their SU and anxiety symptoms. Analyses focused on neural response to social exclusion versus inclusion within 3 regions of interest and change in SU across 2 years.

RESULTS

Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to social exclusion, but not subgenual anterior cingulate cortex or anterior insula, moderated the relation between anxiety symptoms and SU, such that higher anxiety symptoms predicted a greater relative increase in SU only for those youth with a lower dorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to exclusion.

CONCLUSIONS

Blunted dorsal anterior cingulate cortex response to social exclusion may serve as a neural susceptibility marker of altered conflict monitoring or emotion regulation in middle adolescence that, in combination with high levels of anxious feelings, elevates the risk for onset of and/or increased SU by late adolescence. These findings have implications for designing targeted interventions to mitigate SU among adolescents.

Origins of Anhedonia in Childhood and Adolescence

Anhedonia reflects a reduced ability to engage in previously pleasurable activities and has been reported in children as young as 3 years of age. It manifests early and is a strong predictor of psychiatric disease onset and progression over the course of development and into adulthood. However, little is known about its mechanistic origins, particularly in childhood and adolescence. In this chapter, we provide a socio-cognitive model of the development of anhedonia. This model is substantiated by past literature presented in this chapter to account for how the individual trajectories of emotion knowledge, autobiographical memory, and self-concept representations contribute to the onset, persistence, and progression of anhedonia from early childhood through adolescence.

Developmental cascades and educational attainment

Developmental cascades describe how systems of development interact and influence one another to shape human development across the lifespan. Despite its popularity, developmental cascades are commonly used to understand the developmental course of psychopathology, typically in the context of risk and resilience. Whether this framework can be useful for studying children's educational outcomes remains underexplored. Therefore, in this chapter, we provide an overview of how developmental cascades can be used to study children's academic development, with a particular focus on the biological, cognitive, and contextual pathways to educational attainment. We also provide a summary of contemporary statistical methods and highlight existing data sets that can be used to test developmental cascade models of educational attainment from birth through adulthood. We conclude the chapter by discussing the challenges of this research and explore important future directions of using developmental cascades to understand educational attainment.

Aberrant Neural Response to Social Exclusion Without Significantly Greater Distress in Youth With Bipolar Disorder: Preliminary Findings

BACKGROUND

Little is known about the effects of social exclusion on youth with bipolar disorder (BD). Understanding these effects and the functional neural correlates of social exclusion in youth with BD may establish differences from healthy youth and help identify areas of intervention.

METHODS

We investigated brain function in 19 youth with BD and 14 age and gender matched healthy control (HC) participants while performing Cyberball, an fMRI social exclusion task. Whole brain activation, region-of-interest, and functional connectivity were compared between groups and examined with behavioral measures.

RESULTS

Compared with the HC group, youth with BD exhibited greater activation in the left fusiform gyrus (FFG) during social exclusion. Functional connectivity between the left FFG and the posterior cingulate/precuneus was significantly greater in the HC compared with the BD group. For the HC group only, age and subjective distress during Cyberball significantly predicted mean FFG activation. No significant differences in distress during social exclusion were found between groups.

CONCLUSION

Although preliminary due to small sample size, these data suggest that youth with BD process social exclusion in a manner that focuses on basic visual information while healthy youth make use of past experiences to interpret current social encounters. This difference may account for the social cognitive issues experienced by youth with BD, which can lead to more severe anxiety and mood symptoms.

Psychobiology of Stress and Adolescent Depression (PSY SAD) Study: Protocol overview for an fMRI-based multi-method investigation

Depression is a common, often recurrent disorder that causes substantial disease burden worldwide, and this is especially true for women following the pubertal transition. According to the Social Signal Transduction Theory of Depression, stressors involving social stress and rejection, which frequently precipitate major depressive episodes, induce depressive symptoms in vulnerable individuals in part by altering the activity and connectivity of stress-related neural pathways, and by upregulating components of the immune system involved in inflammation. To test this theory, we recruited adolescent females at high and low risk for depression and assessed their psychological, neural, inflammatory, and genomic responses to a brief (10 minute) social stress task, in addition to trait psychological and microbial factors affecting these responses. We then followed these adolescents longitudinally to investigate how their multi-level stress responses at baseline were related to their biological aging at baseline, and psychosocial and clinical functioning over one year. In this protocol paper, we describe the theoretical motivations for conducting this study as well as the sample, study design, procedures, and measures. Ultimately, our aim is to elucidate how social adversity influences the brain and immune system to cause depression, one of the most common and costly of all disorders.

Neural Responses to Social Reward Predict Depressive Symptoms in Adolescent Girls During the COVID-19 Pandemic

OBJECTIVE

Adolescent depression is increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly related to dramatic social changes. Individual-level factors that contribute to social functioning, such as temperament and neural reactivity to social feedback, may confer risk for or resilience against depressive symptoms during the pandemic.

METHODS

Ninety-three girls (12-17 years) oversampled for high shy/fearful temperament were recruited from a longitudinal study for a follow-up COVID-19 study. During the parent study (2016-2018), participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task eliciting neural activity to performance-related social feedback. Depressive symptoms were assessed during the parent study and COVID-19 follow-up (April-May 2020). In 65 participants with complete data, we examined how interactions between temperament and neural activation to social reward or punishment in a socio-affective brain network predict depressive symptoms during COVID-19.

RESULTS

Depressive symptoms increased during COVID-19. Significant interactions between temperament and caudate, putamen, and insula activation to social reward were found. Girls high in shy/fearful temperament showed negative associations between neural activation to social reward and COVID-19 depressive symptoms, whereas girls lower in shy/fearful temperament showed positive associations.

CONCLUSIONS

Girls high in shy/fearful temperament with reduced neural activation to social reward may be less likely to engage socially, which could be detrimental during the pandemic when social interactions are limited. In contrast, girls lower in shy/fearful temperament with heightened neural reactivity to social reward may be highly motivated to engage socially, which could also be detrimental with limited social opportunities. In both cases, improving social connection during the pandemic may attenuate or prevent depressive symptoms.

Neural signatures of bullying experience and social rejection in teenagers

Relational bullying in schools is one of the most frequent forms of violence and can have severe negative health impact, e.g. depression. Social exclusion is the most prominent form of relational bullying that can be operationalized experimentally. The present study used MR-based perfusion imaging (pCASL) to investigate the neural signatures of social exclusion and its relationship with individually different extent of previous bullying experience. Twenty-four teenagers reporting bullying experience at different extent were scanned during a virtual ball-tossing (Cyberball game). Our findings showed that social exclusion (relative to social inclusion) activated frontal brain areas: sub- and perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (sg/pgACC), left inferior frontal cortex (IFG), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Positive relationship between exclusion-specific signal increase and individually different extents of prior bullying experience was for the first time observed in left IFG and sgACC. This suggests that more frequent prior experience has conditioned greater mentalizing and/or rumination, in order to cope with the situation. While this interpretation remains speculative, the present data show that the experience of being bullied partly sensitizes the neural substrate relevant for the processing of social exclusion.

How Self-Appraisal Is Mediated by the Brain

Self-appraisal is a process that leads to the formation of self-esteem, which contributes to subjective well-being and mental health. Neuroimaging studies link self-esteem with the activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), anterior insula (AIns), and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It is not known, however, how the process of self-appraisal itself is mediated by the brain and how different nodes of the self-appraisal network interact with each other. In this study, we used multilevel mediation analysis of functional MRI data recorded during the trait adjective judgment task, treating the emotional valence of adjectives as the predictor, behavioral response as the dependent variable, and brain activity as the mediator. The mediation effect was revealed in the rTPJ. Dynamic causal modeling showed that positive self-descriptions trigger communication within the network, with the rTPJ exerting the strongest excitatory output and MPFC receiving the strongest excitatory input. rAIns receives the strongest inhibitory input and sends exclusively inhibitory connections to other regions pointing out to its role in the processing of negative self-descriptions. Analysis of individual differences showed that in some individuals, self-appraisal is mostly driven by the endorsement of positive self-descriptions and is accompanied by increased activation and communication between rTPJ, MPFC, and PCC. In others, self-appraisal is driven by the rejection of negative self-descriptions and is accompanied by increased activation of rAIns and inhibition of PCC and MPFC. Membership of these groups was predicted by different personality variables. This evidence uncovers different mechanisms of positive self-bias, which may contribute to different facets of self-esteem and are associated with different personality profiles.

Do Belonging and Social Exclusion at School Affect Structural Brain Development During Adolescence?

Students' sense of belonging presents an essential resource for academic and health outcomes, whereas social exclusion at school negatively impacts students' well-being and academic performance. Aiming to understand how feelings of school-related belonging and exclusion shape the structural brain development, this study applied longitudinal questionnaire-based data and MRI data from 71 adolescent students (37 females, M_age at t1 = 15.0; t2 = 16.1 years). All were white participants from Germany. Voxel-based morphometry revealed only an association of social exclusion (and not of belonging) and gray matter volume in the left anterior insula: From t1 to t2, there was less gray matter decrease, the more social exclusion students perceived. School-related social exclusion and disturbed neurodevelopment are thus significantly associated.