Investigating Links Between Racial and Ethnic Discrimination, Neurobiology, and Internalizing Symptomatology

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Title: Investigating Links Between Racial and Ethnic Discrimination, Neurobiology, and Internalizing Symptomatology Project Summery/Abstract: Racial and ethnic discrimination significantly impact mental health, with these types of negative experiences linked to greater depression and anxiety. While these relations have now been well established in large-scale epidemiological studies, how racial and ethnic discrimination get “under the skin” to create mental health challenges is poorly understood. Suggestive data underscores that racial and ethnic discrimination may be best conceptualized as forms of chronic psychosocial stressors, especially as these experiences are linked with multi-system biological dysregulation. With these physiological changes likely impacting the brain and brain development, it will be critical to understand if racial and ethnic discrimination influence brain development during childhood and adolescence, a developmental transition when the brain is rapidly changing and when mental health problems are increasing. If racial and ethnic discrimination are compromising brain development during this time, such negative experiences may have reverberating repercussions across the lifespan. In the short term, this research will provide insight into how race-related social experiences impact the brain and lead to depression and anxiety, and shed light on underlying mechanisms (i.e., emotion- and reward- processing) that play a role in internalizing problems among youth of Color. In the long term, this knowledge may be critical to the prevention of poor mental health in adolescence and in adulthood among youth of Color. To achieve these goals, this research will leverage, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (Total N=11,875; youth of Color N=~4490) and use cutting-edge neuroimaging and machine learning methods to examine if brain functional connectivity is impacted by levels of discrimination. Based on past work in adversity exposed cohorts, we have an a priori interest in the amygdala, ventral striatum, and portions of the prefrontal cortex. We believe that variations in these neural circuits critical for emotion- and reward- processing, as well as executive control, will relate to an increased risk for depression and anxiety; however, we will look for associations between discrimination and functional connectivity across the whole brain. We will also investigate if youth's sex and socioeconomic status moderate the strength of relations between discrimination, neural functioning, and internalizing issues. Pinpointing critical pathways between youth of Color's context and brain development, pathways that are typically overlooked when youth are aggregated, may be crucial for identifying targets for interventions to prevent depression and anxiety. Understanding these mechanisms may also give insight into brain development that may be applied to the prevention of other problem behaviors.