Early Adversity and Drug Use Vulnerability Among Low Income Rural Children: Testing a Neuro-ecological Model of Resilience

项目摘要 更广泛的社区环境对儿童神经认知发展的影响和 下游药物滥用是显著的。该提案的重点是居住在农村的低收入儿童， 格鲁吉亚。南方农村的贫困对家庭来说尤其具有挑战性。新的研究表明， 农村贫困与城市贫困相比，具有不同的风险和保护因素， 儿童的神经和社会情感发展。这些差异强调了独特的背景风险 以及影响农村青年吸毒脆弱性发展的保护性因素。由一名 从生态发展神经科学的角度来看，我们认为脆弱性的神经标志物不能被 从儿童对生态环境的经验中孤立地理解。这项研究是在 第一个将神经评估与环境压力因素的多维评估相结合， 在农村社区的保护进程，并开始跟踪7岁的儿童在敏感的 生命过程的发展期-对吸毒脆弱性的持续影响。 我们的核心前提假设，认知控制系统（认知控制网络[CCN]）的效率 在调节社会情绪系统（情绪，奖励和显着性网络[ERSN]）是一种机制， 将农村儿童面临的逆境与他们吸毒的脆弱性联系起来。我们认为， 逆境的性质，并具体说明与威胁，剥夺， 不可预测性然而，在将逆境与药物使用联系起来的途径中存在相当大的个体差异 脆弱性是儿童暴露于家庭、同伴、学校和社区保护过程的产物。 我们建议招募265名低收入的农村儿童（7岁）及其主要照顾者进入一个前瞻性的 队列研究（跟踪7至10岁的儿童）。儿童将参加fMRI扫描以评估CCN ERSN的调制。为了评估逆境暴露和社会生态保护因素，我们将 获得丰富的多层次信息，可用于测试以下目标：1）童年的影响 逆境对神经风险机制的影响，2）逆境通过神经系统对药物使用脆弱性的间接影响 风险机制，3）家庭，同伴，学校和社区保护因素的调节作用， 儿童期逆境神经风险之间的联系以及神经风险和药物使用脆弱性之间的联系。 有效连接农村背景、神经成像和行为数据的多层次研究对于以下方面至关重要： 提高这一人群药物使用复原力发展模型的精确性和特异性。

Project Summary The influence of broader community contexts on children’s neurocognitive development and risk for downstream drug misuse is significant. The focus of this proposal is on low-income children who reside in rural Georgia. Being poor in the rural South is particularly challenging for families. Emerging research suggests that rural vs. urban poverty is characterized by distinct risk and protective factors that have unique effects on children’s neural and socioemotional development. These differences underscore the unique contextual risk and protective factors that affect the development of drug use vulnerability among rural youth. Informed by an ecological developmental neuroscience perspective, we purport that neural markers of vulnerability cannot be understood in isolation from children’s experience of their ecological contexts. The proposed study is among the first to integrate neural assessments with multidimensional assessments of environmental stressors and protective processes in rural communities and begins following children at age 7 during a sensitive developmental period for life-course-persistent effects on drug use vulnerability. Our core premise posits that the efficiency of cognitive control systems (cognitive control networks [CCN]) in modulating socioemotional systems (emotion, reward, and salience networks [ERSN]) is a mechanism linking rural children’s exposure to adversity to their drug use vulnerabilities. We consider the multidimensional nature of adversity and specify environmental experiences associated with threat, deprivation, and unpredictability. However, considerable individual differences exist in the pathway linking adversity to drug use vulnerability, a product of children’s exposure to family, peer, school, and community protective processes. We propose to recruit 265 low-income, rural children (age 7) and their primary caregivers into a prospective cohort study (following children from ages 7 to 10). Children will participate in fMRI scans to assess CCN modulation of the ERSN. To assess exposure to adversity and social-ecological protective factors, we will obtain rich multi-level information that can be used to test the following aims: 1) the influence of childhood adversity on neural risk mechanisms, 2) the indirect influence of adversity on drug use vulnerability via neural risk mechanisms, and 3) the moderating influence of family, peer, school, and community protective factors on the links between childhood adversity neural risk as well as between neural risk and drug use vulnerabilities. Multi-level research that effectively connects rural contexts, neuroimaging, and behavioral data is critical for advancing the precision and specificity of developmental models of drug use resilience for this population.