@article{ref1,
title="Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neural responses to reward",
journal="Social cognitive and affective neuroscience",
year="2024",
author="Westerman, Heidi B. and Suarez, Gabriela L. and Richmond-Rakerd, Leah S. and Nusslock, Robin and Klump, Kelly L. and Burt, S. Alexandra and Hyde, Luke W.",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
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 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 exposure to community violence was associated with reward-related ventral striatum activation after accounting for familial factors associated with differences in reward-related activation (e.g., parenting, family income). Moreover, we tested whether exposure to community violence is a mechanism linking socioeconomic disadvantage to reward-related activation in the ventral striatum. We utilized data from 444 adolescent twins sampled from birth records and residing in neighborhoods with above-average levels of poverty. Exposure to community violence was associated with greater reward-related ventral striatum 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 exposure to community violence, 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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1749-5016",
doi="10.1093/scan/nsae029",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae029"
}