Relations of temporoparietal connectivity with neighborhood social fragmentation in youth at clinical high-risk for psychosis

Abstract

Temporoparietal brain areas comprise a candidate set of regions for interrogating the brain functional correlates of socioenvironmental factors in people at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P). Temporal lobe abnormalities have been shown to be common among people with schizophrenia spectrum conditions. Further, temporoparietal brain regions are implicated in tasks relevant to psychosocial outcomes, including coherent autobiographical memory recall and multimodal integration. This report examined relations of hippocampal-temporoparietal functional connectivity with neighborhood-level social fragmentation, a composite of area-level characteristics that measures social cohesion, among youth at CHR-P and healthy comparisons in the second wave of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (n = 146, age = 19.9 ± 3.9, 47 % female). This study also examined whether those relations were moderated by individual-level social engagement in desirable activities. Significant positive relations of neighborhood-level social fragmentation and hippocampal functional connectivity with the superior temporal pole were observed among participants at CHR-P. Moderation analyses demonstrated that those relations were significant only at low and mean levels of individual-level social engagement in participants at CHR-P. Findings contribute to the literature indicating that adverse environmental factors are associated with deviant patterns of brain connectivity. This exploratory research also contributes to future theorizing about neurobiological mechanisms underlying therapeutic interventions involving social engagement that have demonstrated improved functional outcomes for people with psychotic disorders.

Keywords: Environmental risk; Hippocampus; Prodrome; Social engagement; Temporal pole.