RAPID: Leveraging the ABCD Study to Examine the Effects of Hurricane Irma Exposure: The Disaster and Youth, Neural and Affective Maturation in Context (DYNAMIC) Study

该奖项支持对受2017年9月袭击美国东南部的飓风伊尔玛影响的儿童和家庭的研究。这项研究项目将研究自然灾害如何影响大脑、思维和情绪。自然灾害具有破坏性，每年影响全球数百万人，包括儿童。灾难经历与青少年感到脆弱，在学校、家里和同龄人中遇到问题，以及心理健康和药物使用问题有关。这项研究还研究了灾难前的大脑功能和思维如何保护青少年免受灾难相关压力的影响。这项资助的工作可能会为地方、州和国家对灾难的反应提供信息，识别灾难发生后最危险的年轻人，揭示韧性的模式，并加强我们对典型儿童发展的理解。在飓风伊尔玛登陆前一年，佛罗里达州和南卡罗来纳州的一大批儿童--他们后来受到飓风的影响--开始参与一项关于大脑和认知发展的大型、多地点纵向调查，名为青少年大脑和认知发展(ABCD)研究。研究人员还对加州的一大批未受飓风影响的儿童进行了研究。目前的研究将利用ABCD研究中在飓风之前收集的数据，该研究使用了一系列神经心理学、访谈、遗传学以及结构和功能神经成像测试。由于灾难很少是可预测的，大多数先前关于灾难暴露影响的研究无法获得有关研究参与者灾前状态或功能水平的重要信息；当前研究的前瞻性设计将避免这一问题。此外，这项研究将使数据能够在飓风发生后不久收集，而飓风及其后果的经历是新鲜的。因此，研究人员将能够比较飓风前后的大脑功能、情绪和思维，以测试与灾难相关的压力对几个发育过程的影响的假设。关键的预测是，除了导致认知和情感领域的创伤后应激症状增加外，飓风相关压力的增加还将导致特定大脑区域(例如，海马体、杏仁核、前额叶皮质和其他区域)的体积损失、皮质厚度减少和神经传递受损。神经测量将使用T1和T2加权MRI扫描和扩散加权MRI扫描。通过研究儿童的IRMA相关经历、创伤暴露和疏散相关压力，这项研究将提供一个独特的机会，纵向考察灾难暴露和灾难相关压力对青少年发展的影响。这项研究将帮助广大公众更好地了解灾害对儿童的影响，并确定在灾害发生后处于最大风险的青年。

This award supports research on children and families affected by Hurricane Irma, which hit the Southeastern United States in September 2017. This research project will study how natural disasters affect brain, thinking, and mood. Natural disasters are disruptive and affect millions of people worldwide each year, including children. Disaster experiences are associated with youth feeling vulnerable and experiencing problems at school, at home, and with peers, as well as problems with mental health and substance use. This research also examines how pre-disaster brain functioning and thinking may protect against some of the effects of disaster-related stress on youth. The funded work will likely inform local, state, and national responses to disasters, identify youth at greatest risk after a disaster, reveal patterns of resilience, and strengthen our understanding of typical child development.In the year before Hurricane Irma's landfall, a large sample of children in Florida and South Carolina--who were later affected by the hurricane--began participating in a large, multisite longitudinal investigation of brain and cognitive development, the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Also studied was a large sample of control children in California, who were not affected by the hurricane. The current study will take advantage of data collected prior to the hurricane in the ABCD study, which used a battery of neuropsychological, interview, genetic, and structural and functional neuroimaging tests. Because disasters are rarely predictable, most prior studies of the effects of disaster exposure do not have access to important information about research participants' pre-disaster statuses or levels of functioning; the prospective design of the current research will avoid this problem. In addition, this research will enable data to be collected very soon after the hurricane, while the experiences of the hurricane and its aftermath are fresh. As a result, the researchers will be able to compare pre- and post-hurricane brain functioning, mood, and thinking, to test hypotheses about the effects of disaster-related stress on several developmental processes. Key predictions are that in addition to causing elevated posttraumatic stress symptoms in both cognitive and affective domains, increased hurricane-associated stress will have caused loss of volume, reduced cortical thickness, and impaired neural transmission in specific brain areas (for example, in the hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and other areas). Neural measurements will be taken using T1- and T2-weighted MRI scans and diffusion-weighted MRI scans. By studying children's Irma-related experiences, traumatic exposure, and evacuation-related stress, this study will afford a unique opportunity to longitudinally examine the effects of disaster exposure and disaster-related stress on youth development. This study will help the general public better understand the effects of disasters on children and identify youth at greatest risk in the aftermath of disasters.