UCLA

Despite extensive research exploring the impact of early life adversity exposure on neurodevelopment, the extent to which exposure to various forms of adversity impacted neurodevelopment and puberty was not clear. Previous studies focused on discrete populations of youth (e.g. institutionalized youth, sexual assault survivors) studied for their exposure to often a singular form of adversity. Likewise, studies examining sources of resiliency are often limited in the sources they capture, the outcomes they measure and the sample studied. This dissertation is novel in examining different facets that interact with adversity exposure and sources of resiliency to influence structural neurodevelopment, pubertal maturation and behavioral outcomes pertinent to psychopathology risk. The first chapter provides an overview to the dissertation, noting the state of the science, gaps in the literature this dissertation aims to address, and implications of this work. The second chapter comprehensively examines whether different forms of resiliency moderated cumulative adversity’s impact on structural neurodevelopment and internalizing, externalizing and total problems. Additionally, this study examined whether frontolimbic circuitry mediated the relationship between cumulative adversity exposure and CBCL outcomes. The third chapter tested whether puberty mediated the relationship between both type-specific and cumulative adversity exposure and amygdala and hippocampal volumes. Additionally, this chapter examined the relationship between pubertal development (i.e. adrenarche and gonadarche) and type-specific and cumulative adversity exposure. Finally, this study examined whether school-based support moderated the impact of adversity exposure on pubertal development, specifically gonadarche. The fourth chapter is the first study to examine the impacts of youth-perceived neighborhood threat and parental consolation on amygdala volume in periadolescent youth. The key findings across the total sample are: 1) enlarged left amygdala volumes in the presence of perceived neighborhood threat and in the absence of parental consolation; 2) diminished left amygdala volume in the absence of both neighborhood threat and parental consolation; and 3) a significant interaction effect of parental consolation and neighborhood threat on left amygdala volume. Finally, the fifth chapter discusses both and challenges attributable to multi-site publicly available multimodal, including neuroimaging, data. Proposed improvements are suggested in an effort to minimize barriers associated with the use of “big data”. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of neurodevelopment and puberty, and by identifying sources of resiliency that can dampen the impacts of adversity exposure, has the ability to inform legislative and policy efforts.