Using polyneuro risk scores to understand the relationship between childhood socioeconomic disadvantage, neurobehavioral deviations, and problematic substance use

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Substance use is a major public health concern that disproportionately affects individuals from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Although part of this association is attributable to downward socioeconomic mobility among individuals who develop problematic patterns of use, emerging evidence suggests that part may also reflect disadvantage-driven changes in brain development that increase risk of use and negative use-related outcomes. However, because much of the research supporting this hypothesized pathway is cross-sectional in nature, characterized by limited measurement of relevant constructs, and conducted in disproportionately White, middle-/upper-class samples, the utility of targeting this pathway with intervention/prevention efforts is unclear. The aims of the proposed career development award are thus twofold: (1) to train the candidate in the use of geospatial tools and related statistical techniques, neuroimaging approaches to characterizing distributed changes in brain structure and function, and theory and principles from health disparities research, and (2) to use this training to test for associations between childhood socioeconomic status, brain structure and connectivity, and substance use trajectories that generalize across racial/ethnic groups using three population-representative, longitudinal cohort studies. The candidate will receive training essential for his development as an independent research scientist under the guidance of an outstanding team of mentors and consultants with extensive experience studying socioeconomic status, brain development, self-regulation, health disparities, and substance use (Drs. Sylia Wilson, Monica Luciana, Damien Fair, Shervin Assari, Martha Farah, and Daniel Berry). The research will be conducted at the Institute of Child Development (ICD) and Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (MCTFR), which together offer unparalleled resources to support work identifying the neural and behavioral mediators connecting children’s early-life environments and later substance use. Altogether, the candidate will address four specific aims: (1) test whether children from low SES backgrounds are more likely to develop problematic substance use trajectories and establish whether these associations generalize across different types of substance use; (2) test whether low childhood SES is associated with individual differences in brain structure and resting-state functional connectivity across distributed networks associated with self-regulatory abilities (i.e., cognitive control, reward sensitivity, negative emotionality); (3) test whether these differences in distributed neural networks mediate associations between low childhood SES and substance use trajectories; and (4) test whether the strength of these associations differ for racial/ethnic minority vs. White children in accordance with the notion of marginalization-related diminished returns. Results of the proposed project have great potential to prompt reconceptualization of brain-based models of substance use and addiction, and, in turn, guide prevention and intervention efforts to reduce an important behavioral health disparity.