Asymmetric access to social vs. economic resources during development calibrates socio-cognitive pathways to risk-taking in emerging adults.

Abstract

Developmental plasticity enables organisms to adapt to early-life environments by tailoring neurocognitive and behavioral strategies to local risks and resources. However, existing research often reduces this dynamic calibration to aggregate exposure to adversity, leaving the effect of distinct early-life environments on adult behaviors and brain functions poorly understood. We investigated how differential childhood socio-economic contexts influence adult risk-taking and associated mechanisms. Forty-eight adults were recruited, and grouped based on their relative access to social (socially-rich) or economic (economically-rich) resources during childhood and completed a balloon analog risk task during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Risk-taking tendencies were estimated via computational modeling and analyzed relative to developmental and current socio-economic contexts. While groups showed similar average risk-taking tendencies, for socially-rich participants only, greater current social support correlated with lower risk-taking. Similarly, risk-taking in both groups coincided with activation in the supramarginal gyrus. However, socially-rich participants uniquely recruited occipito-parietal cortices during risk-taking, a pattern attenuated by higher current social support. Across groups, supramarginal gyrus-prefrontal cortex connectivity tracked mismatches between childhood- and current resource environments, potentially reflecting "sensitized-specialization" of neural systems. Our findings highlight how exposure to distinct early-life environments shapes divergent neurocognitive mechanisms underlying adult risk-taking, offering insights for developing context-sensitive interventions.