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厄玛影响的儿童和家庭的研究。该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，每年影响全世界数百万人，包括儿童。灾害经历与青年感到脆弱和在学校、家庭和同龄人中遇到问题以及心理健康和药物使用问题有关。这项研究还探讨了灾前大脑功能和思维如何保护青年免受与灾害有关的压力的影响。受资助的工作可能会为地方、州和国家对灾害的反应提供信息，识别灾后风险最大的青少年，揭示复原力的模式，并加强我们对典型儿童发展的理解。在飓风厄玛登陆前一年，佛罗里达和南卡罗来纳州的大量儿童样本--他们后来受到飓风的影响--开始参加一个大型的，大脑和认知发展的多地点纵向调查，青少年大脑和认知发展（ABCD）研究。同时研究的还有加州未受飓风影响的对照组儿童的大样本。目前的研究将利用ABCD研究中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，遗传以及结构和功能神经成像测试。由于灾害很少是可预测的，大多数关于灾害影响的先前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过后不久收集，而飓风及其后果的经验是新鲜的。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，以测试有关灾害相关压力对几个发展过程影响的假设。关键的预测是，除了在认知和情感领域引起更高的创伤后应激症状外，飓风相关的压力增加还会导致特定大脑区域（例如海马体，杏仁核，前额皮质和其他区域）的体积损失，皮质厚度减少和神经传递受损。将使用T1和T2加权MRI扫描和弥散加权MRI扫描进行神经测量。通过研究儿童的伊尔玛相关的经验，创伤暴露，疏散相关的压力，这项研究将提供一个独特的机会，纵向研究灾害暴露和灾害相关的压力对青年发展的影响。这项研究将帮助公众更好地了解灾害对儿童的影响，并确定灾后面临最大风险的青年。

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.