Paper from Ka I Ip recognized as finalist for Yale School of Medicine research excellence award

A paper from ICD’s newest assistant professor Ka I Ip, PhD, was recently recognized as a finalist for the Yale School of Medicine’s Office of Health Equity Research award for Yale Research Excellence in 2022. The paper “Associations among Household and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantages, Resting-state Frontoamygdala Connectivity, and Internalizing Symptoms in Youth” published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience was selected as one of 28 finalists out of 700 eligible papers. Five awardees were selected for the award.

The award criteria includes early-stage investigators with a Yale affiliation, the significance of the study in advancing knowledge in the respective field and the potential impact of the research, the scientific rigor of the methodology, the novelty of the idea or approach, and the degree of community partner involvement and relevance. Ip was most recently the Susan Nolen-Hoeksema Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University before joining ICD faculty in January 2023.

Ip’s study looked at a group of 9 and 10-year-olds and whether socioeconomic disadvantages (SED) in both their households and neighborhoods were associated with frontoamygdala resting-state functional connectivity and internalizing symptoms. The frontoamygdala circuitry has been implicated as a brain circuitry that supports emotion regulation, and is important to examine because it has been associated with heightened anxiety and depression symptoms among youth, though the linkage is still unclear.

Findings suggest that while household-related SED may have a more direct association with brain function, whereas neighborhood-related SED may interact with brain function to predict developmental outcomes. That is, the study found that youth with a more negative frontoamygdala circuitry, which has often been suggested to be a more mature “adult-like” pattern, show a potential buffering effect against the impact of disadvantaged neighborhood environment. Though, this potential interpretation awaits further replication and corroboration with longitudinal studies. 

Nevertheless, these findings have strong implications in understanding heterogeneity in how socioeconomic disadvantages at both the household and neighborhood levels may be related to brain development, and to identify subgroups of youth that may be particularly vulnerable for living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. 

Ip’s research into how early life stress and social and structural determinants of health confer risk and resilience for developmental psychopathology and health disparities will continue at his D.A.N.C.E. (Development, Affective Neuroscience, Culture & Environment) Lab at ICD.

Congratulations Ka!