Socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood can impact behavioral and brain development. Past work has consistently focused on the amygdala and hippocampus, two brain areas critical for emotion and behavioral responding. While there are SES differences in amygdala and hippocampal volumes, there are many unanswered questions in this domain connected to neurobiological specificity, and for whom these effects may be more pronounced. We may be able to investigate some anatomical subdivisions of these brain areas, as well as if relations with SES vary by participant age and sex. No work to date has however completed these types of analyses. To overcome these limitations, here, we combined multiple, large neuroimaging datasets of children and adolescents with information about neurobiology and SES (N=2765). We examined subdivisions of the amygdala and hippocampus and found multiple amygdala subdivisions, as well as the head of the hippocampus, were related to SES. Greater volumes in these areas were seen for higher-SES youth participants. Looking at age- and sex-specific subgroups, we tended to see stronger effects in older participants, for both boys and girls. Paralleling effects for the full sample, we see significant positive associations between SES and volumes for the accessory basal amygdala and head of the hippocampus. We more consistently found associations between SES and volumes of the hippocampus and amygdala in boys (compared to girls). We discuss these results in relation to conceptions of 'sex-as-a-biological variable' and broad patterns of neurodevelopment across childhood and adolescence. These results fill in important gaps on the impact of SES on neurobiology critical for emotion, memory, and learning.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused global declines in life expectancy; it is therefore critical to understand risk factors related to mortality and morbidity for this infectious disease. Past work indicates that certain pre-existing medical conditions, behavioral patterns, and sociodemographic factors may increase COVID-19-related negative outcomes. Left unexplored, however, is whether COVID-19 outcomes are influenced by exposure to childhood adversity. This is a notable gap given that childhood adversity is associated with lifelong physical health disparities and early mortality. We leverage data from the UK Biobank cohort (N=151,200) to investigate relations between early childhood adversity and COVID-19 mortality and morbidity. As predicted, we show that childhood adversity is associated with a higher risk of COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality, even after adjusting for potential confounding variables. Such results highlight the importance of considering early-life experiences and their impact on COVID-19 outcomes to guide public health intervention and prevention strategies.
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