What’s the harm? Examining police contact and amygdala reactivity among black adolescents

A growing literature links various experiences of adversity to brain activity, particularly in regions that support threat processing and the stress response (e.g. the amygdala). However, this work has not considered racialized adversities and the extent to which specific experiences (e.g. police contact) may be uniquely salient for marginalized communities (e.g. Black adolescents). In a sample of 131 Black adolescents, we found that a history of police contact was associated with heightened amygdala reactivity when viewing neutral faces. Activity was specific to the Basolateral (BL) subregion, a region involved in hypervigilance. Police contact uniquely contributed to amygdala activation over and above cumulative measures of threat and social deprivation experiences traditionally studied in adversity literature. This study highlights police contact as a form of racialized adversity that is important to consider when elucidating the neurobiological embedding of adversity, particularly among marginalized youth.