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Citation |
Yang XF, Hilliard K, Gotlieb R, Immordino-Yang MH. J. Res. Adolesc. 2024; ePub(ePub): ePub. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2024, John Wiley and Sons) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
38923619 |
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Abstract |
Adolescence involves extensive brain maturation, characterized by social sensitivity and emotional lability, that co-occurs with increased independence. Mid-adolescence is also a hallmark developmental stage when youths become motivated to reflect on the broader personal, ethical, and systems-level implications of happenings, a process we term transcendent thinking. Here, we examine the confluence of these developmental processes to ask, from a transdisciplinary perspective, how might community violence exposure (CVE) impact brain development during mid-adolescence, and how might youths' dispositions for transcendent thinking be protective? Fifty-five low-SES urban youth with no history of delinquency (32 female; 27 Latinx, 28 East Asian) reported their CVE and underwent structural MRI first at age 14-18, and again 2 years later. At the study's start, participants also discussed their feelings about 40 minidocumentaries featuring other teens' compelling situations in a 2-h private interview that was transcribed and coded for transcendent thinking. Controlling for CVE and brain structure at the start: (1) New CVE during the 2-year inter-scan interval was associated with greater gray matter volume (GMV) reduction over that interval in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a central network hub whose reduced volume has been associated with posttraumatic stress disorder, and across multiple additional cortical and subcortical regions; (2) participants' transcendent thinking in the interview independently predicted greater GMV increase during the 2-year inter-scan interval in the ACC. Language: en |
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Keywords |
social cognition; adolescent brain development; environmental stressor |