Why does the experience of neighborhood second hand violence affect some young people but not others? – ScienceDaily

A new study from Northwestern University aims to solve a problem of resilience: why does an indirect or indirect experience of violence in the neighborhood affect some young people, but not others?

"Little is known about the brain networks involved in the formation of these different findings, a problem we are pursuing here," said Gregory E. Miller, senior author of the study and professor of psychology at Weinberg College of Medicine. Northwestern Arts and Sciences.

"Like previous studies, we find that young people living in very violent neighborhoods have worse cardiometabolic health than their peers in safer communities," said Miller, also a faculty member of the Institute for Policy Research of the University. "By extending this knowledge, we show that this connection is absent for young people who display superior connectivity within the central frontoparietal (CEN) central executive network of the brain, which facilitates self-control efforts as well as the reinterpretation of the brain. threatening events and removal of unwanted emotional imagery. "

Building on the knowledge of the intrinsic functional architecture of the brain, the researchers predicted that individual differences in connectivity between the state of rest and the state of rest would help explain the variability of the strength of the badociation between neighborhood violence and cardiometabolic health.

The researchers badyzed 218 factors related to metabolic health, including obesity and insulin resistance, among 218 grade eight students in the Chicago area. By evaluating neighborhood factors, including murder rates, the researchers also performed functional MRIs (fMRI) of the brain of the study participants.

As expected, connectivity of rest states within the central executive network has been shown to be a moderator of adaptation. Out of six separate outcomes, a higher murder rate in the neighborhood was badociated with a higher cardiometabolic risk, but this relationship was apparent only among youth who displayed lower connectivity at the CEN resting state .

However, no correlation of this type was found in young people who displayed resting functional connectivity in the same brain network. According to the researchers, 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) design, can not claim a causal link between neighborhood violence and health, and the authors conclude that a longitudinal multi-wave study is needed to track conditions neighborhood, brain development and cardiometabolic risk. through childhood to establish causality.

"For basic scientists, these findings provide clues to neural circuits that facilitate or hinder adaptation," Miller said.

Further studies could lead to possible interventions, what their preliminary evidence suggests could be "networked 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.

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