Poster #57 - Differential Brain Activity as a Function of Social Buffering During Social Evaluative Stress in Early Adolescence

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Adolescence is a period of heightened risk for stress-sensitive affective pathology (Thapar et al., 2012). Stress reactivity also increases with puberty (Sumter et al., 2010). Critically, our research group has found that the effectiveness of social buffering by parents, the most powerful stress-regulatory mechanism in mammals, wanes with puberty at this critical time (Doom et al., 2015; Hostinar et al., 2015). Social buffering refers to the capacity of affiliated individuals to reduce the activity of threat- and stress-responsive neurobiological systems (Gunnar & Donzella, 2022). Importantly, we lack knowledge regarding the neural underpinning of social buffering in adolescence and changes in neural responses to potential social buffers during puberty. To date, the loss of social buffering effectiveness with puberty has largely been examined using activity of the HPA axis as the stress measure. To the extent that a normative reduction in the efficacy of social partners to buffer stress contributes to adolescent vulnerability to stress, the relative dearth of knowledge about social buffering relationships and mechanisms during the peripubertal period hinders our ability to develop more effective interventions for at-risk youth. In the current study, we examined neural responses to social evaluative stress while adolescents were alone or intermittently had a parent or researcher present over video conferencing in the scanner. 87 adolescents (aged 11-14 years) participated. Brain activity, salivary cortisol, and self-report data were collected during the Minnesota Imaging Stress Test in Children (MISTiC; Herzberg et al., 2020), a neuroimaging version of the Trier Social Stress Test (Kirschbaum, Pirke, & Helhammer, 1993). MISTiC consists of the preparation and delivery of a speech to unfamiliar judges and completion of timed multiple-choice math problems. For this project, we focused on examining brain activity during a judged math task relative to an unjudged math task. We conducted exploratory analyses (uncorrected p<.05) given that data collection is ongoing. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found a network of regions that shows a general buffering effect, including the right amygdala, left orbitofrontal cortex, and subgenual cingulate. In these regions participants in the alone condition showed a larger response stress response (judged>unjudged math) than those in the buffering conditions. Further, we found evidence for a parent-specific buffering effect in the dorsal anterior cingulate. This region showed lower stress-related activity for participants in the parent condition vs. other conditions. Notably, neither cortisol responses nor self-reported perceived stress differed between buffering conditions. Pending results from the final dataset (anticipated N=150), these findings suggest that social buffers may be effective in altering brain responses to stress even in the absence of changes in hormonal or perceived stress. Results from this project may direct greater attention to the role of developmental disruptions in the social buffering of stress as possible contributing factors to the rise of affective problems in the early teen years.

Authors

• Finola Eileen Kane-Grade, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Zachary Miller, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Bonny Donzella, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Nikola Tsakonas, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Megan R. Gunnar, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Kathleen M. Thomas, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities