Deadly Gun Violence and Corticolimbic Connectivity During Adolescence: Moderation by Collective Efficacy

• In Event: Novel Approaches to Operationalizing the Neighborhood Context

Abstract

Exposure to community violence (ECV) is unfortunately common for youth in the United States (Finkelhor et al., 2013). Although ECV has been linked to increased risk for psychopathology (Fowler et al., 2009), neighborhood collective efficacy (i.e., social cohesion, informal social control) is an important protective factor (Leventhal et al., 2009). Despite an extensive behavioral literature, less is known about the biological mechanisms through which ECV impacts psychopathology, with no existing examinations of the moderating effects of collective efficacy.
Functional connectivity within the corticolimbic system, which includes the amygdala and medial regions of the prefrontal cortex (mPFC), is one candidate mechanism by through which ECV increases risk for psychopathology. The corticolimbic system supports emotion processing and contingency learning, through propagation and regulation of physiological stress responses and guidance of attention towards salient environmental stimuli (LeDoux, 2000). Childhood adversities that signal threat (e.g., harsh parenting, abuse) have been associated with altered amygdala-mPFC connectivity during affective face processing that additionally correlate with internalizing (e.g., anxiety) behaviors (McLaughlin et al., 2019). However, no studies have examined the influences of ECV independent of correlated neighborhood socioeconomic resources or adversities that occur within the home. This is particularly important for understanding risk and resilience during adolescence, when youth spend more time outside of the home in their neighborhoods (Smetana et al., 2006).

The current study uses novel incident-level data on deadly gun violence incidents to examine the interactive effects of ECV and collective efficacy on amygdala-mPFC functional connectivity in the Study of Adolescent Neurodevelopment, a subsample of adolescents (N = 165; 52% Female; 76% Black or African American) from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). Using incident-level data on deadly gun violence from the national Gun Violence Archive, participant addresses were used to map incidents that occurred during the year prior to the age 15 visit, providing measures of exposure by distance (from incident to residence), time (relative to interview date), and frequency (number of incidents within a given time and distance). Amygdala-mPFC functional connectivity was measured at age 15 using an implicit emotion faces matching task.

Collective efficacy exerted widespread moderating effects on the associations between exposure to past year deadly gun violence and amygdala-mPFC connectivity (Figure 1). For adolescents who perceived low neighborhood collective efficacy, past year gun violence was associated with stronger positive amygdala-prefrontal connectivity during fearful face processing versus baseline which, in turn, was associated with greater adolescent internalizing symptoms. By contrast, for youth perceiving high collective efficacy, past year gun violence exposure was associated with stronger negative right amygdala – right mPFC connectivity during fear processing and less internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that the combination of exposure to deadly gun violence and youth perceptions of low neighborhood collective efficacy heighten risk for internalizing psychopathology through amygdala-mPFC functional connectivity.

Additional analyses in the nationwide FFCWS (N = 4,898), which boasts greater statistical power, will examine how distance and timing of exposure sculpt internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence, and whether youth perceptions of collective efficacy moderate these associations.

Authors

• Arianna Gard, University of Maryland - College Park
  Presenting Author

• Sarah James, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sara McLanahan, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Colter Mitchell, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christopher S Monk, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luke W. Hyde, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author