The same neural patterns of functional network connectivity can have different implications for mental health depending on the environment, with youth in high trauma and familial risk environments showing stronger functional connectivity between salience and frontoparietal networks associated with increased symptoms, while youth in high disadvantage environments showed the opposite pattern.
Three distinct clusters of youth were identified based on their home, school, and community environments, labeled as low-risk, high disadvantage, and high trauma and familial risk groups.
Youth exposed to high trauma and familial risk showed the highest mental health symptom levels over time compared to youth in low-risk or economically disadvantaged environments.
Youth in the high trauma and familial risk group showed stronger functional connectivity between the salience and frontoparietal networks associated with increased mental health symptoms.
Youth in the high disadvantage group showed the opposite pattern, with salience and frontoparietal network functional connectivity associated with decreased mental health symptoms.
Brain-behavior associations between functional network connectivity and mental health symptoms were not observed when examined across the entire sample.
Group differences in brain-behavior associations were more pronounced in female and older youth.
The findings demonstrate that the same neural patterns of functional network connectivity can have different implications for mental health depending on environmental context.
This research suggests that the relationship between brain activity patterns and mental health symptoms in children and teenagers is not the same for everyone — it depends heavily on the kind of environment a young person grows up in. Using a large group of over 8,000 young people followed over time, researchers identified three distinct environmental profiles: low-risk, economically disadvantaged, and high trauma/familial risk. Youth in the high trauma and familial risk group had the worst mental health outcomes over time, and in this group, stronger connections between two brain networks (the salience and frontoparietal networks) were linked to more mental health problems. Strikingly, in youth from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, stronger connections between the same brain networks were associated with fewer symptoms — the opposite relationship. One of the most important findings is that these brain-behavior links were completely invisible when all youth were lumped together in a single analysis. This means that studies which don't account for environmental differences may be missing — or even misrepresenting — how the brain relates to mental health. The differences were also more pronounced in older youth and in girls, suggesting that age and sex further shape how environment and brain development interact. This research suggests that there is no single "neural signature" of mental health risk or resilience that applies to all young people. Instead, the meaning of a particular brain connectivity pattern may depend on a child's life circumstances. This has practical implications for how researchers and clinicians think about identifying children at risk for mental health problems and for developing interventions — approaches that are sensitive to a child's specific environmental context may be more effective than one-size-fits-all strategies.
Hardi F, Keding T, Holt-Gosselin B, Goldfarb E, Gee D. (2026). Childhood environment clusters reveal heterogeneous associations between large-scale brain networks and youth mental health symptoms.. Psychological medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291726104115