Alright folks. Actual work isn't happening, so today's goal is to share the results of our recently published paper! "Beyond family-level adversities: Exploring the Developmental Timing of Neighborhood Effects on the Brain" in Developmental Science …https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/10.1111/desc.12985

2/n
First presented this paper @Flux_Congress in 2017 (that's right folks, 2017). #life. Collaboration between Daniel Shaw, @forbes_erika at Pitt, Luke Hyde, @colterm @csmonk1 and @AndiMMaxwell at @UMich (now badass MD/PHD student at UMN), and @FFCWS Brooks-Gunn & McLanahan

3/n We use prospective longitudinal data from two samples of boys, followed from birth through adolescence and young adulthood. Census-derived neighborhood disadvantage, family-level adversities, and corticolimbic function during socioemotional tasks

4/n The idea was to examine whether adversity during early childhood would sculpt subcortical devt (thought to be more sensitive to early postnatal environs) and adversity experienced in adolescence would be associated with PFC function (i.e., a second "sensitive" period).

5/n In both samples, we found that neighb. disadvantage during early childhood (but not adol), was associated with amygdala (but not PFC) function. In one sample only, neighb. disadvantage during adolescence (but not early child.) was associated with PFC (not amygdala) func.

6/n Importantly, these associations were robust to a ton of correlated family-level adversities. This reorientiaton towards community-level sources of risk and resilience in the dev neuro literature is nascent but has been highlighted by others incl @SarahLWhittle @methoxl

7/n It's important to think about WHY neighb. disadvantage in early child. would sculpt brain devel. if kids spend most time in the home (we accounted for parenting, income, etc). Next steps are to think about the built environment, school and community resources, and RESILIENCE!

aaand that was actually hard and definitely counts as work ;o)

Open link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/desc.12985