Family Relationship Quality and Adolescent Neural Processing of Risk Taking

• In Event: 3-118 - Neurodevelopmental Consequences of Parenting and Family Adversity: Brain Imaging Findings from Three Cohort Studies

Integrative Statement

The family is the most important factor in the development of problem behaviors, such as substance use. Indeed, the family context constitutes the primary risk factor for adolescent risk taking, despite the salience of parental influences purportedly receding in adolescence. A consistent body of literature from behavioral longitudinal studies suggest that a wide range of familial variables impact adolescent risk taking, including the quality of the relationship, parental monitoring, marital discord, and parental depression. However, the processes by which the family context may wire the adolescent brain to respond to their social environments is less studied. In the current set of 3 studies, we utilized longitudinal methods with functional magnetic resonance imaging to test how family conflict, maternal depression, and early mother-infant attachment security relate to neural processing and risk taking.
Study 1: Twenty adolescents (Mage= 14.39 years; 10 female) completed a cognitive control task during two fMRI scans, each occurring 1 year apart. Adolescents reporting greater family conflict showed longitudinal increases in risk-taking behavior (r=0.51, p<0.01), and longitudinal increases in inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) activation during cognitive control (t=4.07, p<.005, k=101 contiguous voxels). Importantly, increases in the IFG mediated the link between family conflict and adolescents risk taking (indirect effect=0.51, 95% CI [.07, 1.03]), suggesting that hostile family relationships heighten risk-taking behavior over time via maladaptive neural change in brain regions associated with cognitive control during adolescence.
Study 2: Twenty-three adolescents (Mage= 15.78 years; 15 female) completed a risk-taking task during two fMRI scans, each occurring 1.5 years apart. Greater parental depressive symptoms were associated with increases in their adolescent child’s risk-taking behavior over time (r=0.51, p<0.01) as well as longitudinal increases in ventral striatum (VS) activation during risk taking (t=4.40, p<.005, k=58 contiguous voxels). Importantly, increases in the VS mediated the link between parental depressive symptoms and adolescents risk taking (indirect effect=0.29, 95% CI [0.05, 0.64]), suggesting that a lack of parental positive affect may predispose adolescents towards seeking external rewards in risk taking.
Study 3: At wave 1, 114 toddlers (Mage=32.67 months; 58 female) and mothers completed the Strange Situation, a widely-used and validated task used to assess the quality of the attachment relationship between caregivers and their children. Twelve years later, 50 of these youth (Mage=13.27 years; 16 female) completed a risk-taking task during fMRI. Greater child-mother attachment insecurity at age 33 months predicted increased activation in the ventral striatum, IFG, and DLPFC, suggesting that early attachment to mothers is important for programming adolescents’ responsivity to reward value and may increase susceptibility to risk taking.
Together, these studies suggests provide converging evidence that negative family relationships (family conflict, parental depression, and attachment insecurity) may impair adolescents’ cognitive regulation and increase their sensitivity to external rewards in their environment, thereby increasing their risk taking.

Authors

• Eva H. Telzer, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author

• Ethan M. McCormick, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nancy McElwain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yang Qu, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author