Violence exposure moderates stress-elicited neurobehavioral function in young people

Violence exposure has deleterious effects on emotional well-being, including higher rates of future mental illness. Adolescence is an important period of neural development within brain regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex) that support emotional processes. The relationship between brain activity and emotion may vary with violence exposure. Thus, this study investigated the relationship between violence exposure, stress-elicited brain activity, and emotion in young people. Violence exposure was measured four times from 11 to 19 years of age. Participants (n = 301) returned 1 year later (age = 20) to complete mental health (i.e., anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress) questionnaires and the Montreal Imaging Stress Task during behavioral (e.g., skin conductance response and cortisol) and neuroimaging data collection. Data were collected from 2004 to 2018. Violence exposure was positively associated with mental health symptoms. Further, violence exposure moderated the relationship between stress-elicited dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activity and depression, cortisol, and skin conductance response. These findings suggest that violence exposure moderates the relationship between stress-elicited brain function and emotion-related behavior in young people. These findings provide novel insight into neural processes that may underlie the relationship between prior violence exposure and emotional function, which may have important implications for mental health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).