Social Threat in Adolescence Linked to Brain Connectivity Changes and Mental Health Risk

A new longitudinal analysis from the Psychological Medicine journal reveals that adolescents’ perceptions of social threat — in family, school, or neighborhood settings — may lead to changes in brain connectivity that partially explain heightened risk for mental health symptoms. The study, drawing on data from 8,690 youth aged 9–10 years participating in the U.S. Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, suggests a neurobiological pathway bridging environmental stress and psychopathology.

At baseline, each participant’s sense of social threat was quantified by combining measures of family conflict (continuous score) with indicators of perceived unsafety at school and neighborhood (dichotomous). Six months later — and again 30 months later — mental health symptoms were assessed via a youth self‑report instrument covering internalizing, externalizing, and attention problems. The researchers also obtained resting-state functional MRI scans to compute connectivity metrics across five large‑scale cortical networks: default mode (DMN), frontoparietal (FPN), cingulo‑opercular (CON), dorsal attention (DAN), and salience (SN). 

In adjusted models accounting for sex, area deprivation, parental education, and parental mental health — plus corrections for multiple comparisons — higher levels of perceived social threat were robustly associated with greater mental health symptoms at both 6 and 30 months. Standardized path coefficients were ~ 0.27 (p < .001) for 6-month outcomes and ~ 0.14 (p < .001) for 30-month outcomes. Across the 15 connectivity variables examined, more perceived threat was linked to lower connectivity within DMN, DAN, FPN, and CON, and reduced negative (i.e., “less negative”) connectivity between DMN‑DAN, DMN‑CON, and FPN‑CON.

Mediation analyses indicate that altered connectivity partially bridges the pathway from social threat to mental health symptoms. Specifically, lower within‑network connectivity in DMN and FPN, along with less negative between‑network connectivity in DMN‑DAN, DMN‑CON, and FPN‑CON, served as significant indirect pathways in the 6‑month model. These results held even when further controlling for baseline mental health and race/ethnicity. When mental health outcomes were subdivided, connectivity changes mediated associations with internalizing and attention symptoms but not externalizing problems.

In parsing contributions by context, the authors found that family conflict had the largest direct association with symptom scores, followed by unsafe school and neighborhood environments. Neighborhood unsafety was uniquely linked to connectivity alterations and mental health via DMN and DMN‑DAN pathways.

These findings strengthen the case for Social Safety Theory: a youth’s subjective perception of threat in their social surroundings may influence brain network organization, which in turn heightens vulnerability to mental health symptoms. Given the study’s scope, multi‑site design, and longitudinal framework, the results carry weight, though causal interpretations remain tentative. The authors suggest that interventions fostering social safety in homes, schools, and communities might mitigate these neural and psychological effects.