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Abstract
Food insecurity affects over 11 million youth in the United States and is a complex and understudied form of adversity in adolescence. Food insecurity, particularly during the sensitive period of adolescence, is a considerable psychosocial stressor that may affect neural functioning and behavior. Adolescents exposed to food insecurity may be at a higher risk for impulsive behavior. The associations between food insecurity, neural functioning, and impulsivity have yet to be examined. In addition, the family environment is a core context that may moderate stress-related vulnerabilities. In the present study, I investigated the effects of food insecurity on impulsivity via resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the anterior insula (AI) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and evaluated the protective role of family balanced flexibility in the link between food insecurity and neurobiological vulnerabilities in a sample of adolescents. The present study used two waves of data from a study of 142 adolescents. I found that low levels of balanced family flexibility may exacerbate the effect of food insecurity on heightened connectivity between the AI and the MFG. In contrast, high levels of balanced family flexibility partially buffered this link. Increased rsFC between AI and MFG left and left hemispheric nodes predicted an increase in impulsivity. Conditional indirect effects were also found. INDEX WORDS: Adolescence, Food Insecurity, resting state functional connectivity, impulsivity.