Transcendent thinking counteracts longitudinal effects of mid‐adolescent exposure to community violence in the anterior cingulate cortex

Abstract

AbstractAdolescence involves extensive brain maturation, characterized by social sensitivity and emotional lability, that co‐occurs with increased independence. Mid‐adolescence is also a hallmark developmental stage when youths become motivated to reflect on the broader personal, ethical, and systems‐level implications of happenings, a process we term transcendent thinking. Here, we examine the confluence of these developmental processes to ask, from a transdisciplinary perspective, how might community violence exposure (CVE) impact brain development during mid‐adolescence, and how might youths' dispositions for transcendent thinking be protective? Fifty‐five low‐SES urban youth with no history of delinquency (32 female; 27 Latinx, 28 East Asian) reported their CVE and underwent structural MRI first at age 14–18, and again 2 years later. At the study's start, participants also discussed their feelings about 40 minidocumentaries featuring other teens' compelling situations in a 2‐h private interview that was transcribed and coded for transcendent thinking. Controlling for CVE and brain structure at the start: (1) New CVE during the 2‐year inter‐scan interval was associated with greater gray matter volume (GMV) reduction over that interval in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a central network hub whose reduced volume has been associated with posttraumatic stress disorder, and across multiple additional cortical and subcortical regions; (2) participants' transcendent thinking in the interview independently predicted greater GMV increase during the 2‐year inter‐scan interval in the ACC. Findings highlight the continued vulnerability of mid‐adolescents to community violence and the importance of supporting teens' dispositions to reflect on the complex personal and systems‐level implications and affordances of their civic landscape.