Mechanisms underlying resilience to neighborhood disadvantage

几十年的研究已经证实了邻里劣势的破坏性影响， 身体、社会经济和心理健康结果。即便如此，许多在美国长大的孩子 弱势社区环境表现出适应能力。儿童如何实现 在面对这样的逆境时，这些有弹性的结果？现有的研究表明， 社区层面的因素保护这些儿童免受弱势群体中的许多压力因素的影响。 邻里关系然而，很少有工作考虑到神经行为通路， 这些保护过程赋予了恢复力。拟议中的UG 3/UH 3将做到这一点， 确定恢复力的神经标记，并阐明多层次的表观遗传，环境， 保护性因素通过遗传过程促进这些神经弹性通路。我们 我建议重新评估500对青少年双胞胎的样本（年龄在11-16岁;以前评估过 6至10岁之间）居住在中度至重度弱势社区。我们将 采用尖端的神经成像方法（即，连接任务和静息功能磁共振成像的联合模型， DTI和sMRI）来识别与恢复力相关的协同神经网络 （在这里操作为适应能力和精神病理学的缺乏），同时也 利用我们独特的“高危”双胞胎样本的纵向和遗传信息性质， 阐明了恢复力的神经标志物的病因学过程。我们特别假设 通过保护青年免受不利环境中的压力，积极的父母和 社区使儿童能够发展规范的神经结构， 适应性结果，即使面对逆境。我们的基因信息发育 因此，神经科学的方法将提供一个前所未有的机会，阐明多层次的 通过这种方式，从根本上促进我们的 理解在面对长期逆境时的适应。

Decades of research have confirmed the damaging effects of neighborhood disadvantage on physical, socioeconomic, and mental health outcomes. Even so, many children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhood contexts demonstrate adaptive competence. How do children achieve these resilient outcomes in the face of such adversity? Extant studies indicate that familial- and community-level factors protect these children from the many stressors found in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Very little work, however, has considered the neurobehavioral pathways through which these protective processes confer resilience. The proposed UG3/UH3 will do just this, identifying neural markers of resilience and illuminating the multilevel epigenetic, environmental, and genetic processes through which protective factors promote these neuro-resilient pathways. We propose to re-assess a sample of 500 adolescent twin pairs (at age 11-16 years; previously assessed between ages 6 and 10) residing in modestly-to-severely disadvantaged neighborhoods. We will employ cutting-edge neuroimaging methodologies (i.e., joint models that bridge task and resting fMRI, DTI, and sMRI) to identify the synergistic neural networks that are associated with resilience (operationalized here as adaptive competence and the absence of psychopathology), while also capitalizing on the longitudinal and genetically-informed nature of our unique `at-risk' twin sample to illuminate the etiologic processes underlying neural markers of resilience. We specifically postulate that, by protecting youth from the stressors presents in disadvantage contexts, positive parents and communities enable children to develop the normative neural architecture that undergirds subsequent adaptive outcomes, even in the face of adversity. Our genetically-informed developmental neuroscience approach will thus provide an unprecedented opportunity to illuminate the multilevel biobehavioral pathways leading to resilience, and in this way, fundamentally advance our understanding of adaptation in the face of chronic adversity.