Association between longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment experiences and adolescent substance use.

Background: Although there is a well-established link between child maltreatment and adolescent substance use, it remains unclear if and how longitudinal patterns of maltreatment experiences are associated with substance use in adolescence.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to examine how distinct patterns of longitudinal maltreatment experiences are associated with adolescent substance use.

Participants And Setting: The participants were 899 adolescents from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN).

Mapping frontostriatal white matter tracts and their association with reward-related ventral striatum activation in adolescence.

The ventral striatum (VS) is implicated in reward processing and motivation. Human and non-human primate studies demonstrate that the VS and prefrontal cortex (PFC), which comprise the frontostriatal circuit, interact to influence motivated behavior. However, there is a lack of research that precisely maps and quantifies VS-PFC white matter tracts.