Research shows

Binghamton University research shows that adverse circumstances may hinder children’s reward processing and increase future risk of depression

According to groundbreaking research from Binghamton University, communities characterized by high crime rates, financial difficulties and limited resources can not only affect children’s daily experiences, but may actually change the way their brains respond to positive and negative events. The study, published in studies on psychopathology of children and adolescents, shows that children from disadvantaged communities show a decrease in neural response when they win or fail, provided they already have a family history of depression.

This finding provides critical insights into how environmental factors outside of children’s immediate family members can increase vulnerability to mental health challenges, especially for those who have been genetically depressed.

Beyond Personal Experience: How Community Shapes Young People’s Thoughts

Although previous studies have focused extensively on individual stressors, such as personal trauma, this study expands our understanding through studies examining how community-level factors affect the brain. The research team, led by Professor Brandon Gibb, and graduate student Elana Israel and former graduate students Cope Feurer and Aliona TSypes, specifically targets how neighborhood conditions affect neural reward processing, a key factor in the risk of depression.

“One of my interests is how neural reward processing is related to the risk of depression. We know that this affects the effects of being under stress,” Israel said. “Previous studies have focused on individual-level stress – people who report trauma or interpersonal stress that they have experienced – but fewer studies have paid less attention to community-level stressors.”

Measuring the impact of community on children’s brains

The research team studied more than 200 children aged 7-11 to determine whether their parents had a history of severe depression. Using postal code data, they assessed each child’s neighborhood environment, including crime risks, socio-economic disadvantages, and community resources.

When children complete a simple currency guessing task, the researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure their brain activity. This allows the team to observe the neural responses of children when they win or lose money during the task.

The main findings of the study:

• Children from disadvantaged communities show blunt brain response rates to rewards and losses
• This effect is the strongest among children whose parents have a history of depression
• Children without a family history of depression have less impact on neighborhood disadvantage
• The study used a variety of neighborhood quality measures, including the regional deprivation index, neighborhood crime risk and child opportunity index

This pattern suggests that growing up in chronic stressful environments may lead to children developing a suppressed emotional response system, especially those who are already at the genetic risk of depression.

Adapt to chronic stress: When emotional mutations become problematic

“When you have good or bad things happening, your brain reacts, and we can measure brain activity,” says Gibb. “And how you tend to react to good or bad things happening increases your risk for things like depression, etc. It shows that it’s not only what happens to you personally, but the environment you live in – the level of stress around you, whether it happens directly to you or not.”

The researchers believe that this blunt response may represent adaptability to living in a chronic stressful environment. When children grow up surrounded by unpredictability or threats, their brains may learn to respond too strongly to positive or negative events.

“When you are stressed for a long time, it can weaken your reaction to anything, for better or worse,” says Gibb. “We want the kids to react when good things happen. You should be excited. That’s what motivates you to be involved and do things. That’s what we think is happening.”

However, this can become a problem when adaptive responses cause motivation or enjoy the enjoyment of a positive experience.

Impact on community mental health

The implications of this study go far beyond individual mental health treatment. It shows that addressing community-level factors should be part of an integrated approach to support children’s psychological development.

Gibb stressed: “In these cases alone, even without direct contact with moving children, the characteristics of these neighborhoods can affect the children. Therefore, there are broader impacts and even more reasons why we should try to improve our communities.”

Going forward, the research team has begun a follow-up study on what happens to children’s neural responses when families move to a new community. They also plan to explore whether similar effects occur in social outcomes (e.g. peer acceptance and rejection) and whether patterns persist into social outcomes during adolescence.

This work adds to growing evidence that mental health is not only genetic and environmental impacts of immediate family members, but also depends on the wider community environment in which children develop, which is the importance of community-level interventions as well as individual treatment.