Person: Busso, Daniel S.
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Busso
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Daniel S.
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Busso, Daniel S.
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Publication Neurobiological Mechanisms of Risk for Psychopathology in Adolescents Exposed to Childhood Adversity(2016-05-10) Busso, Daniel S.; Luk, Gigi; Nelson, Charles A.; Sheridan, Margaret A.Childhood adversity (CA) exerts a deleterious toll on mental health, contributing to population-wide disparities in educational attainment, economic productivity and responsible citizenship (Shonkoff et al., 2012). The past decade has witnessed a burgeoning interest in how exposure to adversity affects neurobiological development, thereby representing one pathway through which these experiences become developmentally embedded. However, our knowledge of these intervening processes currently remains limited. This dissertation examines neurobiological mechanisms linking childhood adversity with adolescent psychopathology, a critical step for developing effective prevention and intervention efforts supporting at-risk youth. In Study 1, I explore the differential impact of threat (exposures that involve traumatic risks to the safety of the child, as with abuse) and deprivation (exposures that involve the absence of expected environmental inputs, as with neglect or poverty) on physiological reactivity to stress and psychopathology. Although both threat and deprivation were associated with greater psychopathology, only threat exposures were mediated by changes in physiological reactivity. These findings underscore the importance of distinguishing between different forms of confounded adversities, and highlight the potential value of targeting interventions based on disorder etiology. In Study 2, I use a longitudinal design to identify whether neural structure mediates the association between childhood maltreatment and psychiatric disorders. Maltreatment was associated with reduced cortical thickness in prefrontal and temporal cortex, and these differences prospectively predicted psychopathology two years later. Identifying pre-clinical, transdiagnostic indicators of vulnerability is likely to have important ramifications for the field of preventative psychiatry, facilitating intervention efforts. Finally, in Study 3, I explore whether adolescents’ inhibitory control of threatening stimuli is moderated by maltreatment exposure. Participants completed a Go/No-Go task, a standard measure of inhibitory control, for stimuli that had previously been paired with an aversive sound (CS+) and those that had not (CS-). Contrary to hypotheses, inhibitory control was not impaired for the CS+ compared to the CS-, and this effect did not differ by maltreatment exposure. However, maltreated adolescents’ inhibitory control for the CS+ predicted anti-social behavior symptoms. Further research is needed to examine the conditions for which learned threat compromises cognitive functioning in maltreated youth.