Experiences of racial discrimination and adolescent neural sensitivity to social threats and rewards

Marginalized groups experience frequent racial discrimination, making them more perceptive to social cues. During adolescence, individuals become even more perceptive to such cues due to increased social cognition. Examining neural responses to social cues can provide insight into our understanding of how experiencing racial discrimination might “get under the skin.” One hundred forty-five adolescents (Mage = 14.23) participated in a longitudinal experimental study which entailed responding to an extensive questionnaire as well as completing a task within an fMRI scanner. Experiences of Racial Discrimination scores (EOD) were calculated for participants who self-identified as members of marginalized groups. Results show that EOD scores were correlated with neural processing of social threat/reward anticipation and outcomes. At the neural level, teens showed increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the cerebellum for threat and reward anticipation, respectively. For the outcome condition, we found dampened responses to threat in the angular, frontal and middle gyrus, and enhanced responses to reward in the right postcentral gyrus. The results of this study show that experiences or racial discrimination are in fact associated with neural responses within adolescents’ brains. Keywords: social threat; racial discrimination; adolescence; fMRIBachelor of Scienc