The resilient brain against childhood poverty

Abstract

Poverty remains a persistent structural issue in society, profoundly impacting children's mental health and resilience. However, the influence of poverty on children's resilience and its neural underpinnings is not well understood. This study investigates this impact using a nationally representative sample (N = 11878) and neuroimaging techniques to explore the heterogeneity of resilience mechanisms in poor children. Our findings reveal that poor children (living below the federal poverty threshold) experience exacerbated effects of early life adversities (ELAs) on behavioral problems, which persist into adolescence, indicating disrupted resilience. By subtyping poor children based on neural representations of self-regulation (brain activation during stop signal task), we identified two distinct subtypes: subtype-1, with heightened neural activation, exhibited significantly worse resilience; while subtype-2, with reduced activation, showed resilience levels comparable to non-poor children. Two subtypes did not differ significantly in superficial characteristics including ELA exposure and demographics. However, poor children with subtype-1 had thicker left-middle-frontal-gyrus (L-MFG) brain regions, correlating with fewer behavioral problems and weaker ELA impacts, suggesting a unique resilience mechanism. This L-MFG-based resilience mechanism is exclusive to subtype-1, and not observed in subtype-2 or non-poor children. These findings underscore the importance of understanding individual heterogeneity in resilience mechanisms among disadvantaged children. Our study emphasizes the need for future research to delve deeper into adaptation processes to ELAs and poverty, advocating for the exploration of varied resilience mechanisms to mitigate the stigma associated with poverty and guide interventions aimed at narrowing mental health gradient.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32130045 & 82021004).

Author Declarations

I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.

Yes

The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below:

The study used ONLY openly available human data that were originally located at: https://wiki.abcdstudy.org/

I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.

Yes

I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).

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I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable.

Yes

Data Availability

Data is from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Information on how to access ABCD data through the NIMH Data Archive (NDA) is available on the ABCD study data sharing webpage: https://abcdstudy.org/scientists/data-sharing/

https://abcdstudy.org/scientists/data-sharing/

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