Social determinants of corticolimbic development and aggressive behavior

斯科特·德莱尼 项目总结/摘要 童年贫困是青少年发展攻击性行为问题的一个已知风险因素， 但贫穷与侵略之间的联系仍不清楚。理解这种关系是 贫困的复杂生态学的生物，社会和心理社会暴露复杂。然而，尽管如此， 新的研究表明，身体受到威胁的经历对发展 弱势儿童的攻击性行为问题。努力确定生物机制， 早期生命威胁暴露于攻击性行为表明大脑生物学的改变。横截面， 观察性神经影像学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学，其涉及威胁感知和 攻击性行为然而，迄今为止的神经影像学研究将贫困和低家庭收入视为一种 整体经验，他们没有评估的具体作用，威胁的经验，对皮质边缘 发展此外，大多数关于儿童贫困的神经影像学研究依赖于横断面测量， 大脑发育，从而使他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 童年暴露于威胁性经历、大脑结构变化和 攻击性行为具体来说，该研究首先旨在评估（1）早期生命威胁 暴露与皮质边缘改变;（2）皮质边缘改变与攻击行为。此后， 该研究旨在评估（1）皮质边缘改变是否以及在多大程度上介导了这种关系 威胁暴露与攻击行为之间的关系;（2）儿童的生物学性别、父母教育程度和时机 威胁的暴露缓和了利益关系。这些分析之所以成为可能， R世代的研究，其中包括终身的社会暴露数据，终身的行为表型数据， 以及近4000名参与者的多个时间点的MRI扫描。 这项研究金申请有两个长期目标。首先，申请书提出的研究建议是， 将有助于儿童大脑发育的文献，这反过来可能会被用来告知公共卫生政策 通过指导幼儿干预措施的发展，以减轻有毒影响， 的社会劣势。其次，本提案的研究培训计划旨在支持申请人的 指导发展跨学科，独立的研究，并使额外的，更多的 社会和儿童精神病学流行病学，发育神经科学和生物统计学的高级培训。

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.