Abstract
Neighborhood-level disadvantage during childhood is a determinant of health that is hypothesized to confer risk for psychopathology via alterations in neuro-affective processing, including reward responsiveness. However, little research has examined the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage assessed at the community-level on reward processing, which may have important implications for targeted dissemination efforts. Furthermore, not all youth exposed to neighborhood disadvantage may exhibit alterations in reward reactivity, highlighting the need to consider factors that may exacerbate risk for blunted reward reactivity. The current study examined associations between geocoded indices of neighborhood disadvantage and electrocortical reward responsivity in youth and tested whether findings were moderated by maternal history of depression. The sample included 137 youth recruited for studies on the intergenerational transmission of depression. Neighborhood disadvantage was assessed using the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) while the reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential, indexed reward response. Results revealed a significant interaction between ADI and maternal history of depression on youth RewP, such that greater neighborhood disadvantage was significantly associated with lower reward responsiveness, but only for youth with a maternal history of depression. Results were maintained controlling for youth internalizing symptoms and individual-level socioeconomic factors. Findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage may impact youth neural reward processing, at least partially independently of individual risk factors, for youth with a maternal history of depression. If replicated, results suggest intervention efforts may be implemented at the community level to enhance reward responsiveness, specifically for youth living in low-resourced neighborhoods with a maternal history of depression.
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Data, Materials, and/or Code Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Abbreviations
- ADI:
-
Area Deprivation Index
- RewP:
-
Reward positivity
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Bailey Hamner, Hannah Duttweiler, Anna Buckstaff, Michelle Sheena, and Alison Calentino for their help in collecting and preprocessing data for the current project.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Maria Granros and Cope Feurer. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Maria Granros, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This work was supported by NIMH Grant K23MH113793, Brain and Behavior Research Foundation Award, and Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation Fellowship awarded to K.L.B. The project was also supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH, through Grant UL1TR002003. C.F. is supported by NIMH grant K23MH129564. M.G. is supported by NICHD grant F31HD111268. Both M.G. and C.F. were supported by NIMH T32MH067631 for a portion of the current study.
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Granros, M., Burkhouse, K.L. & Feurer, C. Relations Between Neighborhood Disadvantage and Electrocortical Reward Processing in Youth at High and Low Risk for Depression. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-024-01180-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-024-01180-2