Social determinants of corticolimbic development and aggressive behavior

斯科特·德莱尼 项目摘要/摘要 童年贫困是青少年发展攻击性行为问题的已知危险因素， 但将贫困与攻击性联系起来的途径仍然不清楚。理解这种关系是 贫困的生物、社会和心理社会暴露的复杂生态使情况变得更加复杂。不过， 新的研究表明，对身体构成威胁的经历对患上 弱势儿童的攻击性行为问题。努力确定生物机制之间的联系 早年接触攻击性行为的威胁表明，大脑生物学发生了变化。横截面， 观察性神经成像研究将早期低收入家庭暴露与大脑变化联系起来 大脑皮质边缘系统内的形态，该系统参与威胁感知和 攻击性行为。然而，到目前为止，神经成像研究将贫困和低家庭收入视为 单一经验，他们没有评估威胁经历对皮质边缘的具体作用 发展。此外，大多数对儿童贫困的神经成像研究依赖于横断面测量 大脑发育，从而使它们不足以支持因果推理。 利用R世代出生队列的纵向数据，拟议的研究旨在探索 儿童时期接触威胁性经历、脑结构变化和 攻击性行为。具体地说，这项研究首先旨在评估(1)早期生命威胁之间的联系 暴露和皮质边缘改变，以及(2)皮质边缘改变和攻击行为。此后， 这项研究旨在评估(1)皮质边缘改变是否以及在多大程度上调节了这种关系 威胁暴露和攻击性行为之间的关系，以及(2)儿童生物性行为、父母教育和时机 威胁暴露的风险缓和了利益关系。这些分析之所以成为可能，是因为 R世代研究，其中包含终身社交接触数据，终身行为表型数据， 对近4000名参与者进行了多个时间点的核磁共振扫描。 这项奖学金申请有两个长期目标。首先，该应用程序提出了一项研究 将有助于有关儿童大脑发育的文献，这反过来可能被用来为公共卫生政策提供信息 通过指导儿童早期干预措施的发展来减轻有毒影响 社会上的劣势。其次，该提案的研究培训计划旨在支持申请人的 有指导的发展，走向跨学科的独立研究，并实现更多、更多 在社会和儿童精神病学流行病学、发展神经科学和生物统计学方面的高级培训。

Scott Delaney Project Summary / Abstract Childhood poverty is a known risk factor for the development of aggressive behavior problems in youth, but pathways linking poverty exposure to aggression remain unclear. Understanding this relationship is complicated by poverty’s complex ecology of biological, social, and psychosocial exposures. Nevertheless, emerging research suggests physically threatening experiences are particularly salient to the development of aggressive behavior problems among disadvantaged children. Efforts to identify biological mechanisms linking early-life threat exposure to aggressive behavior have pointed to alterations in brain biology. Cross-sectional, observational neuroimaging studies have linked early-life low family income exposure to changes in brain morphology within the corticolimbic system of the brain, which is involved in both threat perception and aggressive behavior. However, neuroimaging studies to date have treated poverty and low family income as a monolithic experience, and they do not assess the specific role of threatening experiences on corticolimbic development. Moreover, most neuroimaging studies of childhood poverty rely on cross-sectional measures of brain development, thereby rendering them insufficient to support causal inferences. Using longitudinal data from the Generation R birth cohort, the proposed research aims to explore the relationships between childhood exposure to threatening experiences, structural brain changes, and aggressive behavior. Specifically, the research first aims to assess associations between (1) early-life threat exposure and corticolimbic alterations, and (2) corticolimbic alterations and aggressive behavior. Thereafter, the research aims to assess whether and to what extent (1) corticolimbic alterations mediate the relationship between threat exposure and aggressive behavior, and (2) child biological sex, parental education, and timing of threat exposure moderate the relationships of interest. These analyses are made possible by the magnitude of the Generation R study, which contains life-long social exposure data, life-long behavioral phenotypic data, and MRI scans from multiple time points for nearly 4000 participants. This fellowship application has two long-term objectives. First, the application proposes research that will contribute to literature on child brain development, which in turn may be used to inform public health policy and practice by guiding the development of early childhood interventions designed to mitigate the toxic effects of social disadvantage. Second, this proposal’s research training plan is designed to support the applicant’s mentored development toward interdisciplinary, independent research, and to enable additional, more advanced training in social and child psychiatric epidemiology, developmental neuroscience, and biostatistics.