TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2024//
TI  - Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neural responses to reward
JO  - Social cognitive and affective neuroscience
A1  - Westerman, Heidi B.
A1  - Suarez, Gabriela L.
A1  - Richmond-Rakerd, Leah S.
A1  - Nusslock, Robin
A1  - Klump, Kelly L.
A1  - Burt, S. Alexandra
A1  - Hyde, Luke W.
SP  - ePub
EP  - ePub
VL  - ePub
IS  - ePub
N2  - 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>
LA  - en
SN  - 1749-5016
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae029
ID  - ref1
ER  -