Equity, diversity, and inclusion in developmental neuroscience: Practical lessons from community-based participatory research

Racial and ethnic socioenvironmental inequity and neuroimaging in psychiatry: a brief review of the past and recommendations for the future

Neuroimaging is a major tool that holds immense translational potential for understanding psychiatric disorder phenomenology and treatment. However, although epidemiological and social research highlights the many ways inequity and representativeness influences mental health, there is a lack of consideration of how such issues may impact neuroimaging features in psychiatric research. More specifically, the potential extent to which racialized inequities may affect underlying neurobiology and impact the generalizability of neural models of disorders is unclear. The present review synthesizes research focused on understanding the potential consequences of racial/ethnic inequities relevant to neuroimaging in psychiatry. We first discuss historical and contemporary drivers of inequities that persist today. We then discuss the neurobiological consequences of these inequities as revealed through current research, and note emergent research demonstrating the impact such inequities have on our ability to use neuroimaging to understand psychiatric disease. We end with a set of recommendations and practices to move the field towards more equitable approaches that will advance our abilities to develop truly generalizable neurobiological models of psychiatric disorders.

Future Directions for Community-Engaged Research in Clinical Psychological Science with Youth

Despite advances in clinical science, the burden of mental health problems among youth is not improving. To tackle this burden, clinical science with youth needs methods that include youth and family perspectives on context and public health. In this paper, we illustrate how community-engaged research (CEnR) methods center these perspectives. Although CEnR methods are well-established in other disciplines (e.g. social work, community psychology), they are underutilized in clinical science with youth. This is due in part to misperceptions of CEnR as resource-intensive, overly contextualized, incompatible with experimentally controlled modes of inquiry, or irrelevant to understanding youth mental health. By contrast, CEnR methods can provide real-world impact, contextualized clinical solutions, and sustainable outcomes. A key advantage of CEnR strategies is their flexibility-they fall across a continuum that centers community engagement as a core principle, and thus can be infused in a variety of research efforts, even those that center experimental control (e.g. randomized controlled trials). This paper provides a brief overview of this continuum of strategies and its application to youth-focused clinical science. We then discuss future directions of CEnR in clinical science with youth, as well as structural changes needed to advance this work. The goals of this paper are to help demystify CEnR and encourage clinical scientists to consider adopting methods that better consider context and intentionally engage the communities that our work seeks to serve.

Recommendations for the responsible use and communication of race and ethnicity in neuroimaging research

The growing availability of large-population human biomedical datasets provides researchers with unique opportunities to conduct rigorous and impactful studies on brain and behavioral development, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of neurodevelopment in diverse populations. However, the patterns observed in these datasets are more likely to be influenced by upstream structural inequities (that is, structural racism), which can lead to health disparities based on race, ethnicity and social class. This paper addresses the need for guidance and self-reflection in biomedical research on conceptualizing, contextualizing and communicating issues related to race and ethnicity. We provide recommendations as a starting point for researchers to rethink race and ethnicity choices in study design, model specification, statistical analysis and communication of results, implement practices to avoid the further stigmatization of historically minoritized groups, and engage in research practices that counteract existing harmful biases.

The promise and pitfalls of a strength-based approach to child poverty and neurocognitive development: Implications for policy

There has been significant progress in understanding the effects of childhood poverty on neurocognitive development. This progress has captured the attention of policymakers and promoted progressive policy reform. However, the prevailing emphasis on the harms associated with childhood poverty may have inadvertently perpetuated a deficit-based narrative, focused on the presumed shortcomings of children and families in poverty. This focus can have unintended consequences for policy (e.g., overlooking strengths) as well as public discourse (e.g., focusing on individual rather than systemic factors). Here, we join scientists across disciplines in arguing for a more well-rounded, "strength-based" approach, which incorporates the positive and/or adaptive developmental responses to experiences of social disadvantage. Specifically, we first show the value of this approach in understanding normative brain development across diverse human environments. We then highlight its application to educational and social policy, explore pitfalls and ethical considerations, and offer practical solutions to conducting strength-based research responsibly. Our paper re-ignites old and recent calls for a strength-based paradigm shift, with a focus on its application to developmental cognitive neuroscience. We also offer a unique perspective from a new generation of early-career researchers engaged in this work, several of whom themselves have grown up in conditions of poverty. Ultimately, we argue that a balanced strength-based scientific approach will be essential to building more effective policies.

Ethnoracialized group differences in attitudes and knowledge about schizophrenia and willingness to engage in biomarker research: The UBIGR Study

Although there is renewed optimism in biomarker research in schizophrenia, there is also need for greater inclusion of historically underrepresented groups in the research. In the present study, we surveyed 599 African American, 352 American Indian/Alaska Native, and 725 NonHispanic White participants about their attitudes toward research, knowledge and attitudes about schizophrenia, and willingness to engage in biomarker testing. Attitudes toward research were examined using the standardized 7-item Research Attitudes Questionnaire (RAQ) measure. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), we tested our predictive model of the likelihood of willingness to engage in biomarker testing for schizophrenia risk. Members of historically underrepresented groups were less willing to engage in biomarker testing. Overall, attitudes toward research, particularly trust, influenced biomarker testing willingness. These findings suggest that factors influencing willingness to engage in schizophrenia biomarker testing may be modifiable by outreach engagement and education.

The future of neuroscience in developmental psychopathology

Developmental psychopathology started as an intersection of fields and is now a field itself. As we contemplate the future of this field, we consider the ways in which a newer, interdisciplinary field - human developmental neuroscience - can inform, and be informed by, developmental psychopathology. To do so, we outline principles of developmental psychopathology and how they are and/or can be implemented in developmental neuroscience. In turn, we highlight how the collaboration between these fields can lead to richer models and more impactful translation. In doing so, we describe the ways in which models from developmental psychopathology can enrich developmental neuroscience and future directions for developmental psychopathology.

Pre-scan state anxiety is associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal response to fearful versus happy faces among trait-anxious Latina girls

BACKGROUND

Unfamiliarity with academic research may contribute to higher levels of anticipatory state anxiety about affective neuroimaging tasks. Children with high trait anxiety display differences in brain response to fearful facial affect compared to non-anxious youth, but little is known about the influence of state anxiety on this association. Because reduced engagement in scientific research and greater mistrust among minoritized groups may lead to systematic differences in pre-scan state anxiety, it is crucial to understand the neural correlates of state anxiety during emotion processing so as to disambiguate sources of individual differences.

METHODS

The present study probed the interactive effects of pre-scan state anxiety, trait anxiety, and emotional valence (fearful vs. happy faces) on neural activation during implicit emotion processing in a community sample of 46 preadolescent Latina girls (8-13 years).

RESULTS

Among girls with mean and high levels of trait anxiety, pre-scan state anxiety was associated with greater right amygdala-hippocampal and left inferior parietal lobe response to fearful faces relative to happy faces.

CONCLUSIONS

Anticipatory state anxiety in the scanning context may cause children with moderate and high trait anxiety to be hypervigilant to threats, further compounding the effects of trait anxiety. Neuroimaging researchers should control for state anxiety so that systematic differences in brain activation resulting from MRI apprehension are not misleadingly attributed to demographic or environmental characteristics.

A call to leverage a health equity lens to accelerate human neuroscience research

Investigation of health inequities tend to be examined, in human neurosciences, as biological factors at the level of the individual. In actuality, health inequities arise, due largely in part, to deep-seated structural factors. Structural inequality refers to the systemic disadvantage of one social group compared to others with whom they coexist. The term encompasses policy, law, governance, and culture and relates to race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, class, sexual orientation, and other domains. These structural inequalities include but are not limited to social segregation, the intergenerational effects of colonialism and the consequent distribution of power and privilege. Principles to address inequities influenced by structural factors are increasingly prevalent in a subfield of the neurosciences, i.e., cultural neurosciences. Cultural neuroscience articulates the bidirectional relationship between biology and environmental contextual factors surrounding research participants. However, the operationalization of these principles may not have the intended spillover effect on the majority of human neurosciences: this limitation is the overarching focus of the present piece. Here, we provide our perspective that these principles are missing and very much needed in all human neuroscience subdisciplines to accelerate our understanding of the human brain. Furthermore, we provide an outline of two key tenets of a health equity lens necessary for achieving research equity in human neurosciences: the social determinants of health (SDoH) framework and how to deal with confounders using counterfactual thinking. We argue that these tenets should be prioritized across future human neuroscience research more generally, and doing so is a pathway to further gain an understanding of contextual background intertwined with the human brain, thus improving the rigor and inclusivity of human neuroscience research.