Sex-Specific Effects of Childhood Poverty on Neurocircuitry of Processing of Emotional Cues: A Neuroimaging Study

Abstract

Background: There is accumulating evidence on the negative impacts of childhood poverty on physical and mental health. Previous work has suggested hyperactive neural response to social fear cues, as well as impairment in neural regulatory functions. However, despite differences found between males and females in stress-related and anxiety disorders, possible sex-specific effects of poverty on emotional processing have not been explored. Methods: We analyzed data from three previously reported experiments of childhood poverty effects on emotional processing and regulation, for sex-specific effects. Participants were 52 healthy Caucasian males and females, from a longitudinal cohort of poverty development study, who were recruited for examining the long-term effects of childhood poverty and stress. The three functional MRI studies included emotion regulation task, emotional face assessment task, and shifted attention emotion appraisal task. Brain activations that associated with childhood poverty previously were entered into a regression analysis with interaction of gender by childhood income-to-need ratio as the independent variable, and age and current income-to-need ratio as variables of no interest, separately for males and females. Results: Amygdala reactivity to implicitly processed fearful faces was positively correlated with childhood income-to-need in adult females but not males. On the other hand, activation in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal regions during emotion regulation by reappraisal was positively correlated with childhood income-to-need in males. Conclusion: Childhood poverty may exert sex-specific effects in adulthood as presented by hypersensitive emotional reactivity of the amygdala in females, and impaired emotion regulatory function of the prefrontal cortex in males. Results suggest further focus on sex-specific effects of childhood poverty.

Race, Ethnicity, Family Socioeconomic Status, and Children’s Hippocampus Volume

“…Although a growing literature has documented a link between high SES and children's brain development, most of the existing knowledge is on a select few brain structures such as the amygdala (Evans et al, 2016;Javanbakht et al, 2016;Javanbakht et al, 2015;Kimberly G Noble et al, 2015). For example, most research on the effects of trauma, stress, adversities, and SES are on amygdala structure and function (Evans et al, 2016;Javanbakht et al, 2016;Javanbakht et al, 2015;Kimberly G Noble et al, 2015).…”

The affective neuroscience of socioeconomic status: implications for mental health

“…19 Three other studies yielded partial support for a relationship between amygdala reactivity to negative facial emotions and SES. The support from these findings was qualified by participant gender in one case (only for women 20 ), ethnicity of depicted face in another (only for Black emotional faces in a study with Mexican American participants 21 ) and history of violence exposure in a third (only in nonexposed participants 22 ). In only one study testing the Excluded review papers (n = 8), reports limited to brain structure (n = 36), clinical populations or healthcare policy (n = 11), or topics other than emotion (n = 18).…”

“…They found that individuals of low SES recruited less prefrontal activation than their higher-SES counterparts and showed less reduction in amygdala activity during reappraisal, consistent with this emotion regulation strategy being used less effectively by these participants. However, gender seems to moderate the effect of SES on prefrontal activity related to emotion regulation: 20 in males but not females when considered separately, activation in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortical regions (dlPFC and vlPFC) during cognitive reappraisal was positively correlated with SES.…”

“…In any case, less functional coupling between the amygdala and vmPFC has been found in low-SES individuals when processing negative emotion. 47 In the same intensively studied group of participants (see also 20,45,47 ), Liberzon and colleagues 48 found less prefrontal activity in lower-SES participants in a task designed to evoke implicit emotion regulation, although in this task the finding was localised to lateral rather than medial regions.…”

Cannabis legalization: progress in harm reduction approaches for substance use and misuse

“…The use of psychoactive substances, including cannabis, has accompanied the development of civilization (1). (In the context of this paper, "psychoactive substances" refers specifically to substances that produce pleasurable and rewarding effects).…”