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CHICAGO, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) – While neighborhood violence has been badociated with adverse health effects for some young people, including sleep loss, asthma and metabolic syndrome, other young people living in neighborhoods with high crime manage to avoid them.
To address this resiliency problem, researchers at Northwestern University (NU) tested 218 grade 8 students in the Chicago area for factors related to metabolic health, including obesity and resistance to l & # 39; insulin. By evaluating neighborhood factors, including murder rates, the researchers also performed functional MRIs (fMRI) of the brain of the study participants.
They found that connectivity of rest states within the Central Executive Network (CEN) had become a moderator of adaptation. Out of six separate outcomes, a higher murder rate in the neighborhood was badociated with greater cardiometabolic risk, but this relationship was apparent only among youth who had lower connectivity to the CEN resting state. .
Such a correlation was not apparent in young people who displayed restful functional connectivity in the same brain network, the researchers said. The results suggest that the central executive network plays a role in adaptability and resilience to adverse events.
The study, because of its cross-sectional and observational approach, can not claim a causal link between neighborhood violence and health. The researchers argue that a longitudinal multi-wave study is needed to track neighborhood conditions, brain development, and cardiometabolic risk during childhood in order to establish causality.
Future studies could lead to possible interventions, which preliminary evidence suggests could be "network training" programs to modulate the functional connectivity of the CEN brain network. These networking programs can improve "self-control, threat rebadessment and suppression of thoughts" to reduce the involvement of at-risk adolescents in drug use, overeating and eating. other reactions to such stress.
The study was published in PNAS.
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