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Early Life Stress Predicts Future Conduct Disorder In Adolescents, Savannah Ellis

Biological Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Early Life Stress (ELS) and adversity increase people’s risk for developing mental, social, or emotional dysregulation and disorders later in life. The objective of this study was to test whether ELS in adolescents could prospectively predict future conduct disorder. The study additionally tested potential neural mediators of the effect of ELS on future conduct disorder, and specifically targeted the structural connections from the anterior insula and medial prefrontal cortex to the Nucleus Accumbens (NAcc). Data for the project came from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD study), which is a longitudinal multi-site consortium funded by the National Institutes of …