Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neural responses to reward

Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2024 May 6;19(1):nsae029. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsae029.

Abstract

A growing literature links socioeconomic disadvantage and adversity to brain function, including disruptions in reward processing. Less research has examined exposure to community violence (ECV) as a specific adversity related to differences in reward-related brain activation, despite the prevalence of community violence exposure for those living in disadvantaged contexts. The current study tested whether ECV was associated with reward-related ventral striatum (VS) activation after accounting for familial factors associated with differences in reward-related activation (e.g. parenting and family income). Moreover, we tested whether ECV is a mechanism linking socioeconomic disadvantage to reward-related activation in the VS. We utilized data from 444 adolescent twins sampled from birth records and residing in neighborhoods with above-average levels of poverty. ECV was associated with greater reward-related VS activation, and the association remained after accounting for family-level markers of disadvantage. We identified an indirect pathway in which socioeconomic disadvantage predicted greater reward-related activation via greater ECV, over and above family-level adversity. These findings highlight the unique impact of community violence exposure on reward processing and provide a mechanism through which socioeconomic disadvantage may shape brain function.

Keywords: brain; community violence; developmental neuroscience; neuroimaging; poverty; reward.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Brain / physiology
  • Brain Mapping
  • Child
  • Exposure to Violence* / psychology
  • Exposure to Violence* / statistics & numerical data
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging* / methods
  • Male
  • Poverty / psychology
  • Residence Characteristics* / statistics & numerical data
  • Reward*
  • Socioeconomic Disparities in Health
  • Socioeconomic Factors
  • Ventral Striatum / diagnostic imaging
  • Ventral Striatum / physiology