# Using polyneuro risk scores to understand the relationship between childhood socioeconomic disadvantage, neurobehavioral deviations, and problematic substance use

> **NIH NIH K01** · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $158,719

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
 Substance use is a major public health concern that disproportionately affects individuals from lower
socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Although part of this association is attributable to downward
socioeconomic mobility among individuals who develop problematic patterns of use, emerging evidence
suggests that part may also reflect disadvantage-driven changes in brain development that increase risk of use
and negative use-related outcomes. However, because much of the research supporting this hypothesized
pathway is cross-sectional in nature, characterized by limited measurement of relevant constructs, and
conducted in disproportionately White, middle-/upper-class samples, the utility of targeting this pathway with
intervention/prevention efforts is unclear. The aims of the proposed career development award are thus
twofold: (1) to train the candidate in the use of geospatial tools and related statistical techniques, neuroimaging
approaches to characterizing distributed changes in brain structure and function, and theory and principles
from health disparities research, and (2) to use this training to test for associations between childhood
socioeconomic status, brain structure and connectivity, and substance use trajectories that generalize across
racial/ethnic groups using three population-representative, longitudinal cohort studies. The candidate will
receive training essential for his development as an independent research scientist under the guidance of an
outstanding team of mentors and consultants with extensive experience studying socioeconomic status, brain
development, self-regulation, health disparities, and substance use (Drs. Sylia Wilson, Monica Luciana,
Damien Fair, Shervin Assari, Martha Farah, and Daniel Berry). The research will be conducted at the Institute
of Child Development (ICD) and Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research (MCTFR), which together
offer unparalleled resources to support work identifying the neural and behavioral mediators connecting
children’s early-life environments and later substance use. Altogether, the candidate will address four specific
aims: (1) test whether children from low SES backgrounds are more likely to develop problematic substance
use trajectories and establish whether these associations generalize across different types of substance use;
(2) test whether low childhood SES is associated with individual differences in brain structure and resting-state
functional connectivity across distributed networks associated with self-regulatory abilities (i.e., cognitive
control, reward sensitivity, negative emotionality); (3) test whether these differences in distributed neural
networks mediate associations between low childhood SES and substance use trajectories; and (4) test
whether the strength of these associations differ for racial/ethnic minority vs. White children in accordance with
the notion of marginalization-related diminished returns. Results of the prop...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10836466
- **Project number:** 5K01DA057359-03
- **Recipient organization:** VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Jonathan Drew Schaefer
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $158,719
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-07-14 → 2028-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10836466

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10836466, Using polyneuro risk scores to understand the relationship between childhood socioeconomic disadvantage, neurobehavioral deviations, and problematic substance use (5K01DA057359-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10836466. Licensed CC0.

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