Neural sensitivity to peer hierarchies: Risks for depressive symptoms for low status adolescents.

ABSTRACT: Popularity is increasingly salient and impactful in adolescence, and unpopular youth are at significantly greater risk of experiencing depressive symptoms. However, adolescents can vary in their neural sensitivity to social stimuli, such that some adolescents may be more impacted by social status than others. We examined whether adolescents' neural sensitivity to popular and unpopular peers moderates the extent that their own social status is related to trajectories of depressive symptoms across 5 years (6th-10th grades). During an fMRI scan, adolescents from the southeastern United States (n = 116, 61 female, 29% White Non-Hispanic, 36% Hispanic, 22% Black/African American, 11% multiracial, 2% other; M_age = 13.59, SD = 0.59) viewed pictures of their popular and unpopular classm

SUBMITTER: Capella J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12783936 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature