Early adolescent friendships aid affective and neural responses to social inclusion and exclusion in young adults

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Abstract
Childhood adversity (CA) is one of the strongest predictors of poor mental health in adolescents. CA is thought to contribute to mental health vulnerability by increased sensitivity to social rejection in later life. Here, we examined whether in a CA vulnerable group friendship quality at age 14 contributes to resilient functioning by age 24 through reducing emotional and neural stress responses to social rejection. Sixty-six participants aged 24 and from a prospective cohort study (ROOTS, N = 1238) underwent brain imaging while playing Cyberball. Resilient functioning at age 24 was quantified as ‘psychological functioning that was better than in others with similar CA experiences’. We found that friendship quality at 14 years predicted stronger emotional changes and increased dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) responses to peer rejection. Resilient functioning per se was associated with similar increased emotional and DMPFC responses. Exploratory mediation analyses showed that friendship quality predicted resilient functioning through increased emotional responses at the end of the assessment day. Our findings suggest that friendship quality at age 14 contributes to resilient functioning at age 24 by increasing sensitivity to positive experiences and improving brain activity thought to represent emotion regulation in response to negative social experiences in early adulthood.