Scientific Publications

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Family conflict is known to operate as a major risk factor for children’s suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs). However, it is unknown whether this effect is similar or different in Black and White children.

Objectives: We compared Black and White children for the association between family conflict and STBs in a national sample of 9-10-year-old American children.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. This study included 9918 White or Black children between the ages of 9 and 10 living in married households. The predictor variable was family conflict. Race was the moderator. The outcome variable was STBs, treated as a count variable, reflecting positive STB items that were endorsed. Covariates included ethnicity, sex, age, immigration status, family structure, parental education, and parental employment, and household income. Poisson regression was used for data analysis.

Results: Of all participants, 7751 were Whites, and 2167 were Blacks. In the pooled sample and in the absence of interaction terms, high family conflict was associated with higher STBs. A statistically significant association was found between Black race and family conflict, suggesting that the association between family conflict and STBs is stronger in Black than White children.

Conclusion: The association between family conflict and STBs is stronger in Black than White children. Black children with family conflict may be at a higher risk of STBs than White children with the same family conflict level. These findings align with the literature on the more significant salience of social relations as determinants of mental health of Black than White people. Reducing family conflict should be regarded a significant element of suicide prevention for Black children in the US.

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Recent studies have shown that parental educational attainment is associated with a larger superior temporal cortical surface area associated with higher reading ability in children. Simultaneously, the marginalization-related diminished returns (MDRs) framework suggests that, due to structural racism and social stratification, returns of parental education are smaller for black and other racial/ethnic minority children compared to their white counterparts.

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This study tested sex differences in the association between hippocampal volume and working memory of a national sample of 9-10-year-old children in the US. As the hippocampus is functionally lateralized (especially in task-related activities), we explored the results for the right and the left hippocampus.

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Poverty, as assessed by several socioeconomic (SES) factors, has been linked to worse cognitive performance and reduced cortical brain volumes in children. However, the relative contributions of the various SES factors on brain development and the mediating effects between cognition and brain morphometry have not been investigated. Here we used cross-sectional data from the ABCD Study to evaluate associations among various SES and demographic factors, brain morphometrics, and cognition and their reproducibility in two independent subsamples of 3892 children. Among the SES factors, family income (FI) best explained individual differences in cognitive test scores (stronger for crystallized than for fluid cognition), cortical volume (CV), and thickness (CT). Other SES factors that showed significant associations with cognition and brain morphometrics included parental education and neighborhood deprivation, but when controlling for FI, their effect sizes were negligible and their regional brain patterns were not reproducible. Mediation analyses showed that cognitive scores, which we used as surrogate markers of the children’s level of cognitive stimulation, partially mediated the association of FI and CT, whereas the mediations of brain morphometrics on the association of FI and cognition were not significant. These results suggest that lack of supportive/educational stimulation in children from low-income families might drive the reduced CV and CT. Thus, strategies to enhance parental supportive stimulation and the quality of education for children in low-income families could help counteract the negative effects of poverty on children’s brain development.

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Insomnia is a common mental disorder, affecting nearly one fifth of the pre-adult population in the United States. The recent, largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) conducted on the United Kingdom Biobank cohort identified hundreds of significant single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), allowing the epidemiologists to quantify individual genetic predisposition in the subsequent studies the polygenic risk scoring technique. The nucleotide polymorphisms and risk scoring, while being able to generalize to other adult populations of European origin, are not yet tested on pediatric and adolescent populations of diverse racial-ethnic backgrounds, and our study intends to fill these gaps. We took the summary of the same United Kingdom Biobank study and conducted a polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis on a multi-ethnicity, pre-adult population provided by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The PRSs according to the significant nucleotide polymorphisms found in white British adults is a strong predictor of insomnia in children of similar European background but lacks power in non-European groups. Through polygenic risk scoring, the knowledge of insomnia genetics summarized from a white adult study population is transferable to a younger age group, which aids the search of actionable targets of early insomnia prevention. Yet population stratification may prevent the easy generalization across ethnic lines; therefore, it is necessary to conduct group specific studies to aid people of non-European genetic background.

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Substantial heterogeneity exists in how rearing environments influence youths’ socioemotional outcomes. This heterogeneity, as suggested by the biological sensitivity to context theory and the differential susceptibility theory, is associated with emotional reactivity patterns and underlying neural functions. The present study investigated amygdalar reactivity to emotional stimuli as a neural signature that amplified the influence of rearing environments on youths’ socioemotional outcomes.

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The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, diverse, longitudinal, and multi-site study of 11,880 adolescents in the United States. The ABCD Study provides open access to data about pubertal development at a large scale, and this article is a researcher’s guide that both describes its pubertal variables and outlines recommendations for use. These considerations are contextualized with reference to cross-sectional empirical analyses of pubertal measures within the baseline ABCD dataset by Herting, Uban, and colleagues (2021). We discuss strategies to capitalize on strengths, mitigate weaknesses, and appropriately interpret study limitations for researchers using pubertal variables within the ABCD dataset, with the aim of building toward a robust science of adolescent development.

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Incidental findings (IFs) are unexpected abnormalities discovered during imaging and can range from normal anatomic variants to findings requiring urgent medical intervention. In the case of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), reliable data about the prevalence and significance of IFs in the general population are limited, making it difficult to anticipate, communicate, and manage these findings.

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Numerous adverse prenatal exposures have been individually associated with risk for psychiatric illness in the offspring. However, such exposures frequently co-occur, raising questions about their cumulative impact. We evaluated effects of cumulative adverse prenatal exposure burden on psychopathology risk in school-aged children.

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This study used a machine learning framework in conjunction with a large battery of measures from 9,718 school-age children (ages 9-11) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to identify factors associated with fluid cognitive functioning (FCF), or the capacity to learn, solve problems, and adapt to novel situations. The identified algorithm explained 14.74% of the variance in FCF, replicating previously reported socioeconomic and mental health contributors to FCF, and adding novel and potentially modifiable contributors, including extracurricular involvement, screen media activity, and sleep duration. Pragmatic interventions targeting these contributors may enhance cognitive performance and protect against their negative impact on FCF in children.

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Significant immunological, physical and neurological benefits of breastfeeding in infancy are well-established, but to what extent these gains persist into later childhood remain uncertain. This study examines the association between breastfeeding duration and subsequent domain-specific cognitive performance in a diverse sample of 9-10-year-olds enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study®. The analyses included 9,116 children that attended baseline with their biological mother and had complete neurocognitive and breastfeeding data. Principal component analysis was conducted on data from an extensive battery of neurocognitive tests using varimax-rotation to extract a three-component model encompassing General Ability, Executive Functioning, and Memory. Propensity score weighting using generalized boosted modeling was applied to balance the distribution of observed covariates for children breastfed for 0, 1-6, 7-12, and more than 12 months. Propensity score-adjusted linear regression models revealed significant association between breastfeeding duration and performance on neurocognitive tests representing General Ability, but no evidence of a strong association with Executive Function or Memory. Benefits on General Ability ranged from a 0.109 (1-6 months) to 0.301 (>12 months) standardized beta coefficient difference compared to those not breastfed. Results indicate clear cognitive benefits of breastfeeding but that these do not generalize to all measured domains, with implications for public health policy as it pertains to nutrition during infancy.

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The developing brain is marked by high plasticity, which can lead to vulnerability to early life stressors. Previous studies indicate that childhood maltreatment is associated with structural aberrations across a number of brain regions. However, prior work is limited by small sample sizes, heterogeneous age groups, the examination of one structure in isolation, the confounding of different types of early life stressors, and not accounting for socioeconomic status. These limitations may contribute to high variability across studies. The present study aimed to investigate how trauma is specifically associated with cortical thickness and gray matter volume (GMV) differences by leveraging a large sample of children (N = 9270) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study). A latent measure of trauma exposure was derived from DSM-5 traumatic events, and we related this measure of trauma to the brain using structural equation modeling. Trauma exposure was associated with thinner cortices in the bilateral superior frontal gyri and right caudal middle frontal gyrus (p-values < .001) as well as thicker cortices in the left isthmus cingulate and posterior cingulate (p-values ≤ .027), after controlling age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Furthermore, trauma exposure was associated with smaller GMV in the right amygdala and right putamen (p-values ≤ .048). Sensitivity analyses that controlled for income and parental education were largely consistent with the main findings for cortical thickness. These results suggest that trauma may be an important risk factor for structural aberrations, specifically for cortical thickness differences in frontal and cingulate regions in children.

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Ecological stress during adolescent development may increase the sensitivity to negative emotional processes that can contribute to the onset and progression of internalizing behaviors during preadolescence. Although a small number of studies have considered the link among the relations between ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, and internalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence, these studies have largely been small, cross-sectional, and often do not consider unique roles of parenting or sex. In the current study, we evaluated the interrelations between ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, subsequent internalizing symptoms, and the moderating roles of parenting and sex among 9- and 10-year-old preadolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study ®. A subset of participants who met a priori quality control criteria for bilateral amygdala activation during the EN-back faces versus places contrast (N = 7,385; Mean Age = 120 months, SD = 7.52; 49.5% Female) were included in the study. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to create a latent variable of ecological stress, and multiple structural equation models were tested to evaluate the association among baseline ecological stress and internalizing symptoms one year later, the mediating role of amygdala reactivity, and moderating effects of parental acceptance and sex. The results revealed a significant association between ecological stress and subsequent internalizing symptoms, which was greater in males than females. There was no association between amygdala reactivity during the Faces versus Places contrast and ecological stress or subsequent internalizing symptoms, and no mediating role of amygdala or moderating effect of parental acceptance on the association between ecological stress and internalizing symptoms. An alternative mediation model was tested which revealed that there was a small mediating effect of parental acceptance on the association between ecological stress and internalizing symptoms, demonstrating lower internalizing symptoms among preadolescents one year later. Given the lack of association in brain function, ecological stress and internalizing symptoms in preadolescents in this registered report, effects from comparable small studies should be reconsidered in larger samples.

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Conduct disorder (CD), characterized by youth antisocial behavior, is associated with a variety of neurocognitive impairments. However, questions remain regarding the neural underpinnings of these impairments. To investigate novel neural mechanisms that may support these neurocognitive abnormalities, the present study applied a graph analysis to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data collected from a national sample of 4,781 youth, ages 9-10, who participated in the baseline session of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®). Analyses were then conducted to examine the relationships among levels of CD symptomatology, metrics of global topology, node-level metrics for subcortical structures, and performance on neurocognitive assessments. Youth higher on CD displayed higher global clustering (β = .039, 95% CI [.0027 .0771]), but lower Degree (β = -.052, 95% CI [-.0916 -.0152]). Youth higher on CD had worse performance on a general neurocognitive assessment (β = -.104, 95% CI [-.1328 -.0763]) and an emotion recognition memory assessment (β = -.061, 95% CI [-.0919 -.0290]). Finally, global clustering mediated the relationship between CD and general neurocognitive functioning (indirect β = -.002, 95% CI [-.0044 -.0002]), and Degree mediated the relationship between CD and emotion recognition memory performance (indirect β = -.002, 95% CI [-.0046 -.0005]). CD appears associated with neuro-topological abnormalities and these abnormalities may represent neural mechanisms supporting CD-related neurocognitive disruptions.

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Parents frequently report behavioral problems among children who snore. Our understanding of the relationship between symptoms of obstructive sleep disordered breathing (oSDB) and childhood behavioral problems associated with brain structural alterations is limited. Here, we examine the associations between oSDB symptoms, behavioral measures such as inattention, and brain morphometry in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study comprising 10,140 preadolescents. We observe that parent-reported symptoms of oSDB are associated with composite and domain-specific problem behaviors measured by parent responses to the Child Behavior Checklist. Alterations of brain structure demonstrating the strongest negative associations with oSDB symptoms are within the frontal lobe. The relationships between oSDB symptoms and behavioral measures are mediated by significantly smaller volumes of multiple frontal lobe regions. These results provide population-level evidence for an association between regional structural alterations in cortical gray matter and problem behaviors reported in children with oSDB.

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This study sought to determine whether gastric symptoms are associated with later eating disorder (ED) symptoms during early adolescence, and whether this relationship is moderated by parental warmth/acceptance and/or the child’s sex.

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Evidence from model organisms and clinical genetics suggests coordination between the developing brain and face, but the role of this link in common genetic variation remains unknown. We performed a multivariate genome-wide association study of cortical surface morphology in 19,644 individuals of European ancestry, identifying 472 genomic loci influencing brain shape, of which 76 are also linked to face shape. Shared loci include transcription factors involved in craniofacial development, as well as members of signaling pathways implicated in brain-face cross-talk. Brain shape heritability is equivalently enriched near regulatory regions active in either forebrain organoids or facial progenitors. However, we do not detect significant overlap between shared brain-face genome-wide association study signals and variants affecting behavioral-cognitive traits. These results suggest that early in embryogenesis, the face and brain mutually shape each other through both structural effects and paracrine signaling, but this interplay may not impact later brain development associated with cognitive function.

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This study assesses obesity, binge eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa among sexual and gender minority children.

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Cerebellum cortex fractional anisotropy is a proxy of the integrity of the cerebellum cortex. However, less is known about how it is shaped by race and socioeconomic status (SES) indicators such as parental education and household income.

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This case-control study using baseline data from the population cohort Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study compared lifetime history of concussion between children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We hypothesized that children with ADHD would have a greater lifetime history of concussion than children without ADHD. Children were recruited from schools across the United States, sampled to provide strong generalizability to the US population. The current sample included 10,585 children (age: mean = 9.9; standard deviation = 0.6; range 9-10 years; 48.9% girls; 64.6% White), including 1085 with ADHD and 9500 without ADHD. The prevalence of prior concussion among children with ADHD was 7.2% (95% CI: 6.6-7.8%) compared with 3.2% (3.1-3.3%) among children without ADHD, meaning current ADHD status was associated with twice the odds of experiencing a prior concussion [ = 44.54;  < 0.001; odds ratio = 2.34 (1.81-3.03)]. No significant differences were observed in proportion of boys and girls with ADHD who had a prior concussion history. The number of current ADHD symptoms were not meaningfully associated with prior concussion history. Lower socioeconomic status was associated with lower rates of reported concussion, but not differentially in association with ADHD. ADHD is associated with twice the lifetime prevalence of prior concussion before age 11 among children from the general U.S. population. Boys and girls with ADHD did not differ in proportions with prior concussion and concussion history was not related to the number of ADHD symptoms reported by parents.

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Multimodal neuroimaging assessments were utilized to identify generalizable brain correlates of current body mass index (BMI) and predictors of pathological weight gain (i.e., beyond normative development) one year later. Multimodal data from children enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study® at 9-to-10-years-old, consisted of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), resting state (rs), and three task-based functional (f) MRI scans assessing reward processing, inhibitory control, and working memory. Cross-validated elastic-net regression revealed widespread structural associations with BMI (e.g., cortical thickness, surface area, subcortical volume, and DTI), which explained 35% of the variance in the training set and generalized well to the test set (R = 0.27). Widespread rsfMRI inter- and intra-network correlations were related to BMI (R = 0.21; R = 0.14), as were regional activations on the working memory task (R = 0.20; (R = 0.16). However, reward and inhibitory control tasks were unrelated to BMI. Further, pathological weight gain was predicted by structural features (Area Under the Curve (AUC) = 0.83; AUC = 0.83, p < 0.001), but not by fMRI nor rsfMRI. These results establish generalizable brain correlates of current weight and future pathological weight gain. These results also suggest that sMRI may have particular value for identifying children at risk for pathological weight gain.

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Negative urgency reflects a specific facet of impulsivity and correlates with a wide range of health-related risk behaviors, including, but not limited to, problematic substance use. Negative urgency is also shaped by family socioeconomic position (SEP), such as parental educational attainment (PEA). This study aimed to explore sex differences regarding protective effects of PEA on children’s negative urgency in the US.

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Sleep disturbance is a common symptom of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders and, especially in childhood, can be a precursor to various mental disorders. However, the genetic etiology of mental illness that contributes to sleep disturbance during childhood is poorly understood. We investigated whether the polygenic features of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are associated with sleep disturbance during childhood. We conducted polygenic risk score (PRS) analyses by utilizing large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) (n = 46,350-500,199) of five major psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders (autism spectrum disorder, schizophrenia, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and bipolar disorder) and, additionally, anxiety disorders as base datasets. We used the data of 9- to 10-year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (n = 9683) as a target dataset. Sleep disturbance was assessed based on the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) scores. The effects of PRSs for these psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders on the total scores and six subscale scores of the SDSC were investigated. Of the PRSs for the five psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, the PRSs for ADHD and MDD positively correlated with sleep disturbance in children (ADHD: R = 0.0033, p = 6.19 × 10, MDD: R = 0.0042, p = 5.69 × 10). Regarding the six subscale scores of the SDSC, the PRSs for ADHD positively correlated with both disorders of initiating and maintaining sleep (R = 0.0028, p = 2.31 × 10) and excessive somnolence (R = 0.0023, p = 8.44 × 10). Furthermore, the PRSs for MDD primarily positively correlated with disorders of initiating and maintaining sleep (R = 0.0048, p = 1.26 × 10), followed by excessive somnolence (R = 0.0023, p = 7.74 × 10) and sleep hyperhidrosis (R = 0.0014, p = 9.55 × 10). Despite high genetic overlap between MDD and anxiety disorders, PRSs for anxiety disorders correlated with different types of sleep disturbances such as disorders of arousal or nightmares (R = 0.0013, p = 0.011). These findings suggest that greater genetic susceptibility to specific psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders, as represented by ADHD, MDD, and anxiety disorders, may contribute to greater sleep problems among children.

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Neighborhood disadvantage has consistently been associated with mental health and cognitive function, in addition to alterations in brain function and connectivity. However, positive environmental influences may buffer these effects. The aim of this study was to examine the association between neighborhood disadvantage and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), the moderating role of positive parenting and school environment, and relationships between disadvantage-associated rsFC patterns and mental health and cognition.

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The Orbitofrontal Cortex (OFC) is a cortical structure that has implications in cognition, memory, reward anticipation, outcome evaluation, decision making, and learning. As such, OFC activity correlates with these cognitive brain abilities. Despite research suggesting race and socioeconomic status (SES) indicators such as parental education may be associated with OFC activity, limited knowledge exists on multiplicative effects of race and parental education on OFC activity and associated cognitive ability. Using functional brain imaging data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we tested the multiplicative effects of race and parental education on left lateral OFC activity during an N-Back task. In our study, we used a sociological rather than biological theory that conceptualizes race and SES as proxies of access to the opportunity structure and exposure to social adversities rather than innate and non-modifiable brain differences. We explored racial variation in the effect of parental educational attainment, a primary indicator of SES, on left lateral OFC activity during an N-Back task between Black and White 9-10 years old adolescents. The ABCD study is a national, landmark, multi-center brain imaging investigation of American adolescents. The total sample was 4290 9-10 years old Black or White adolescents. The independent variables were SES indicators, namely family income, parental education, and neighborhood income. The primary outcome was the average beta weight for N-Back (2 back versus 0 back contrast) in ASEG ROI left OFC activity, measured by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) during an N-Back task. Ethnicity, age, sex, subjective SES, and family structure were the study covariates. For data analysis, we used linear regression models. In White but not Black adolescents, parental education was associated with higher left lateral OFC activity during the N-Back task. In the pooled sample, we found a significant interaction between race and parental education on the outcome, suggesting that high parental education is associated with a larger increase in left OFC activity of White than Black adolescents. For American adolescents, race and SES jointly influence left lateral OFC activity correlated with cognition, memory, decision making, and learning. Given the central role of left lateral OFC activity in learning and memory, our finding calls for additional research on contextual factors that reduce the gain of SES for Black adolescents. Cognitive inequalities are not merely due to the additive effects of race and SES but also its multiplicative effects.

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In the United States, due to residential segregation, racial minorities and families with low socioeconomic status (SES) tend to live in less safe neighborhoods than their White and high SES counterparts. As such, in the US, race and SES closely correlate with neighborhood safety. Due to the high chronicity of stress in unsafe neighborhoods, perceived neighborhood safety may be a mechanism through which race and SES are linked to children’s mental health. Simultaneously, race and SES may alter the effects of perceived neighborhood safety on children’s mental health.

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Segmentation of brain tissue types from diffusion MRI (dMRI) is an important task, required for quantification of brain microstructure and for improving tractography. Current dMRI segmentation is mostly based on anatomical MRI (e.g., T1- and T2-weighted) segmentation that is registered to the dMRI space. However, such inter-modality registration is challenging due to more image distortions and lower image resolution in dMRI as compared with anatomical MRI. In this study, we present a deep learning method for diffusion MRI segmentation, which we refer to as DDSeg. Our proposed method learns tissue segmentation from high-quality imaging data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP), where registration of anatomical MRI to dMRI is more precise. The method is then able to predict a tissue segmentation directly from new dMRI data, including data collected with different acquisition protocols, without requiring anatomical data and inter-modality registration. We train a convolutional neural network (CNN) to learn a tissue segmentation model using a novel augmented target loss function designed to improve accuracy in regions of tissue boundary. To further improve accuracy, our method adds diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) parameters that characterize non-Gaussian water molecule diffusion to the conventional diffusion tensor imaging parameters. The DKI parameters are calculated from the recently proposed mean-kurtosis-curve method that corrects implausible DKI parameter values and provides additional features that discriminate between tissue types. We demonstrate high tissue segmentation accuracy on HCP data, and also when applying the HCP-trained model on dMRI data from other acquisitions with lower resolution and fewer gradient directions.

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Family history of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a robust predictor of MDD onset, especially in early adolescence. We examined the relationships between familial risk for depression and alterations to resting state functional connectivity (rsFC) within the default mode network (wDMN) and between the DMN and the left/right hippocampus (DMN-LHIPP/DMN-RHIPP) to the risk for early adolescent MDD onset.

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Childhood maltreatment is associated with poor mental and physical health. However, the mechanisms of gene-environment correlations and the potential causal effects of childhood maltreatment on health are unknown. Using genetics, we aimed to delineate the sources of gene-environment correlation for childhood maltreatment and the causal relationship between childhood maltreatment and health.

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Regardless of the precise mechanism, all neurodevelopmental models of risk assume that, at the population level, there exist subgroups of individuals that share similar patterns of neural function and development-and that these subgroups somehow relate to psychiatric risk. However, the existence of multiple neurodevelopmental subgroups at the population level has not been assessed previously.

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The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is an unprecedented longitudinal neuroimaging sample that tracks the brain development of over 9-10 year olds through adolescence. At the core of this study are the three tasks that are completed repeatedly within the MRI scanner, one of which is the stop-signal task. In analyzing the available stopping experimental code and data, we identified a set of design issues that we believe significantly compromise its value. These issues include but are not limited to variable stimulus durations that violate basic assumptions of dominant stopping models, trials in which stimuli are incorrectly not presented, and faulty stop-signal delays. We present eight issues, show their effect on the existing ABCD data, suggest prospective solutions including task changes for future data collection and preliminary computational models, and suggest retrospective solutions for data users who wish to make the most of the existing data.

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Although the putamen has a significant role in reward-seeking and motivated behaviors, including eating and food-seeking, minorities’ diminished returns (MDRs) suggest that individual-level risk and protective factors have weaker effects for Non-Hispanic Black than Non-Hispanic White individuals. However, limited research is available on the relevance of MDRs in terms of the role of putamen functional connectivity on body mass index (BMI).

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To determine the prospective associations between contemporary screen time modalities in a nationally representative cohort of 9-10-year-old children and binge-eating disorder at one-year follow-up.

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Although the schizophrenia (SCZ) rate is increased in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it is difficult to identify which ASD youth will develop psychosis. We explored the relationship between ASD and emerging psychotic-like experiences (PLS) in a sample of 9127 youth aged 9-11 from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort. We predicted that parent-reported ASD would be associated with PLS severity, and that ASD youth with PLS (ASD+/PLS+) would differ from ASD youth without PLS (ASD+/PLS-) and youth with PLS but not ASD (ASD-/PLS+) in cognitive function. We fit regression models that included parent-reported ASD, family history of psychosis, lifetime trauma, executive function, processing speed, working memory, age, sex, race, ethnicity, and income-to-needs ratio as predictors of Prodromal Questionnaire-Brief Child (PQ-BC) distress score, a continuous index of PLS severity. We assessed cognitive differences using regression models with ASD/PLS status and relevant covariates as predictors of NIH Toolbox measures. ASD increased raw PQ-BC distress scores by 2.47 points (95% CI 1.33-3.61), an effect at least as large as Black race (1.27 points, 95% CI 0.75-1.78), family history of psychosis (1.05 points, 95% CI 0.56-1.54), and Latinx ethnicity (0.99 points, 95% CI 0.53-1.45. We did not identify differences in cognition for ASD+/PLS+ youth relative to other groups. Our finding of association between ASD and PLS in youth is consistent with previous literature and adds new information in suggesting that ASD may be a strong risk factor for PLS even compared to established SCZ risk factors.

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Mood-state biases in maternal reports of emotional and behavioral problems in their children have been a major concern for the field. However, few studies have addressed this issue from a measurement invariance perspective.

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Previous studies have identified an association between habitual snoring and lower cognitive performance in children. However, whether and to what extent this association is confounded by pertinent demographic, anthropometric, and socioeconomic characteristics is unknown.

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Cross-sectional analyses were conducted in the baseline cohort of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to determine if lifetime low-level alcohol use was associated with an increased likelihood of lifetime suicidality (N=10,773, ages 9-10). Among the lifetime suicide ideation and attempt groups, 37.7% and 36.2% reported lifetime low-level alcohol use, respectively; versus 22.2% in the non-suicidality group. Children reporting lifetime alcohol use (i.e., ≥ a sip) showed a nearly two-fold increase in their odds of lifetime suicidality compared to those with no previous alcohol use. Future prospective research with this cohort will continue to probe alcohol-suicidality associations.

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To examine individual variability between perceived physical features and hormones of pubertal maturation in 9-10-year-old children as a function of sociodemographic characteristics.

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Underage drinking is a serious societal concern, yet relatively little is known about child sipping of alcohol and its relation to beliefs about alcohol. The current study aimed to (1) examine the contexts in which the first sip of alcohol occurs (e.g., type of alcohol, who provided sip, sip offered or taken without permission); (2) examine the association between sipping and alcohol expectancies; and (3) explore how different contexts of sipping are related to alcohol expectancies. We expected to find that children who had sipped alcohol would have increased positive expectancies and reduced negative expectancies compared to children who had never sipped alcohol.

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Many models of psychopathology include a single general factor of psychopathology (GFP) or ” factor” to account for covariation across symptoms. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides a rich opportunity to study the development of the GFP. However, a variety of approaches for modeling the GFP have emerged, raising questions about how modeling choices impact estimated GFP scores. We used the ABCD baseline assessment (ages 9-10 years-old; =11,875) of the parent-rated Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to examine the implications of modeling the GFP using items versus scales; using a priori CBCL scales versus data-driven dimensions; and using bifactor, higher-order, or single-factor models. Children’s rank-ordering on the GFP was stable across models, with GFP scores similarly related to criterion variables. Results suggest that while theoretical debates about modeling the GFP continue, the practical implications of these choices for rank-ordering children and assessing external associations will often be modest.

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Weight-related health conditions and depression peak during adolescence and show relations with brain structure. Understanding how these conditions relate to each other prior to adolescence may guide research on the co-development of unhealthy weight conditions (both underweight and overweight) and depression, with a potential brain-based link. This study examines the cross-sectional relations between body mass index (BMI), depressive symptoms, and brain volume (total and regional) to determine whether BMI has a linear or quadratic relation with depressive symptoms and brain volume and how depressive symptoms and brain volume are related.

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Despite its central role in revealing the neurobiological mechanisms of behavior, neuroimaging research faces the challenge of producing reliable biomarkers for cognitive processes and clinical outcomes. Statistically significant brain regions, identified by mass univariate statistical models commonly used in neuroimaging studies, explain minimal phenotypic variation, limiting the translational utility of neuroimaging phenotypes. This is potentially due to the observation that behavioral traits are influenced by variations in neuroimaging phenotypes that are globally distributed across the cortex and are therefore not captured by thresholded, statistical parametric maps commonly reported in neuroimaging studies. Here, we developed a novel multivariate prediction method, the Bayesian polyvertex score, that turns a unthresholded statistical parametric map into a summary score that aggregates the many but small effects across the cortex for behavioral prediction. By explicitly assuming a globally distributed effect size pattern and operating on the mass univariate summary statistics, it was able to achieve higher out-of-sample variance explained than mass univariate and popular multivariate methods while still preserving the interpretability of a generative model. Our findings suggest that similar to the polygenicity observed in the field of genetics, the neural basis of complex behaviors may rest in the global patterning of effect size variation of neuroimaging phenotypes, rather than in localized, candidate brain regions and networks.

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Sexual minority adolescents have previously been found to experience disparities in self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) compared to heterosexual adolescents. However, there is a paucity of data on SITBs amongst children. Thus, the aim of the current study is to assess the prevalence of SITBs in a large sample of U.S. children and to test whether rates vary by sexual orientation.

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Persistent or recurrent pain is common among adolescents and is associated with poor functioning. The purpose of this study was to determine whether preteens who present with pain, and higher, co-occurring psychological and somatic symptoms (PSS) are at higher risk for persistent pain than other children.

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Psychology research frequently involves the study of probabilities and counts. These are typically analyzed using generalized linear models (GLMs), which can produce these quantities via nonlinear transformation of model parameters. Interactions are central within many research applications of these models. To date, typical practice in evaluating interactions for probabilities or counts extends directly from linear approaches, in which evidence of an interaction effect is supported by using the product term coefficient between variables of interest. However, unlike linear models, interaction effects in GLMs describing probabilities and counts are not equal to product terms between predictor variables. Instead, interactions may be functions of the predictors of a model, requiring nontraditional approaches for interpreting these effects accurately. Here, we define interactions as change in a marginal effect of one variable as a function of change in another variable, and describe the use of partial derivatives and discrete differences for quantifying these effects. Using guidelines and simulated examples, we then use these approaches to describe how interaction effects should be estimated and interpreted for GLMs on probability and count scales. We conclude with an example using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study demonstrating how to correctly evaluate interaction effects in a logistic model.

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While clinical studies have documented sex differences in emotional, behavioral, and cognitive function of children with Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), it is unknown if these sex differences are due to differences in referral and diagnosis or if they can be also seen when we screen a community sample for ADHD. If these sex differences exist in populations with a diagnosis history but cannot be seen in screening, then they are unfair, preventable, and due to gender (social processes in referral and diagnosis) rather than sex.

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Caffeine, a very widely used and potent neuromodulator, easily crosses the placental barrier, but relatively little is known about the long-term impact of gestational caffeine exposure (GCE) on neurodevelopment. Here, we leverage magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, collected from a very large sample of 9157 children, aged 9-10 years, as part of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD ®) study, to investigate brain structural outcomes at 27 major fiber tracts as a function of GCE. Significant relationships between GCE and fractional anisotropy (FA) measures in the inferior fronto-occipito fasciculus and corticospinal tract of the left hemisphere (IFOF-LH; CST-LH) were detected via mixed effects binomial regression. We further investigated the interaction between these fiber tracts, GCE, cognitive measures (working memory, task efficiency), and psychopathology measures (externalization, internalization, somatization, and neurodevelopment). GCE was associated with poorer outcomes on all measures of psychopathology but had negligible effect on cognitive measures. Higher FA values in both fiber tracts were associated with decreased neurodevelopmental problems and improved performance on both cognitive tasks. We also identified a decreased association between FA in the CST-LH and task efficiency in the GCE group. These findings suggest that GCE can lead to future neurodevelopmental complications and that this occurs, in part, through alteration of the microstructure of critical fiber tracts such as the IFOF-LH and CST-LH. These data suggest that current guidelines regarding limiting caffeine intake during pregnancy may require some recalibration.

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Childhood experiences play a profound role in conferring risk and resilience for brain and behavioral development. However, how different facets of the environment shape neurodevelopment remains largely unknown. Here we sought to decompose heterogeneous relationships between environmental factors and brain structure in 989 school-aged children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. We applied a cross-modal integration and clustering approach called ‘Similarity Network Fusion’, which combined two brain morphometrics (i.e., cortical thickness and myelin-surrogate markers), and key environmental factors (i.e., trauma exposure, neighborhood safety, school environment, and family environment) to identify homogeneous subtypes. Depending on the subtyping resolution, results identified two or five subgroups, each characterized by distinct brain structure-environment profiles. Notably, more supportive caregiving and school environments were associated with greater myelination, whereas less supportive caregiving, higher family conflict and psychopathology, and higher perceived neighborhood safety were observed with greater cortical thickness. These subtypes were highly reproducible and predicted externalizing symptoms and overall mental health problems. Our findings support the theory that distinct environmental exposures are differentially associated with alterations in structural neurodevelopment. Delineating more precise associations between risk factors, protective factors, and brain development may inform approaches to enhance risk identification and optimize interventions targeting specific experiences.

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Suicide deaths and suicidal thoughts and behaviors are considered a public health emergency, yet their underpinnings in the brain remain elusive. The authors examined the classification accuracy of individual, environmental, and clinical characteristics, as well as multimodal brain imaging correlates, of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in a U.S. population-based sample of school-age children.

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Childhood is an important time for the manifestation of psychopathology. Psychopathology is characterized by considerable comorbidity which is mirrored in the underlying neural correlates of psychopathology. Both common and dissociable variations in brain volume have been found across multiple mental disorders in adult and youth samples. However, the majority of these studies used samples with broad age ranges which may obscure developmental differences. The current study examines associations between regional gray matter volumes (GMV) and psychopathology in a large sample of children with a narrowly defined age range. We used data from 9607 children 9-10 years of age collected as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study). A bifactor model identified a general psychopathology factor that reflects common variance across disorders and specific factors representing internalizing symptoms, ADHD symptoms, and conduct problems. Brain volume was acquired using 3T MRI. After correction for multiple testing, structural equation modeling revealed nearly global inverse associations between regional GMVs and general psychopathology and conduct problems, with associations also found for ADHD symptoms (p-values ≤ 0.048). Age, sex, and race were included as covariates. Sensitivity analyses including total GMV or intracranial volume (ICV) as covariates support this global association, as a large majority of region-specific results became nonsignificant. Sensitivity analyses including income, parental education, and medication use as additional covariates demonstrate largely convergent results. These findings suggest that globally smaller GMVs are a nonspecific risk factor for general psychopathology, and possibly for conduct problems and ADHD as well.

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Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is associated with numerous neurocognitive deficits, including poor working memory and difficulty inhibiting undesirable behaviors that cause academic and behavioral problems in children. Prior work has attempted to determine how these differences are instantiated in the structure and function of the brain, but much of that work has been done in small samples, focused on older adolescents or adults, and used statistical approaches that were not robust to model overfitting. The current study used cross-validated elastic net regression to predict a continuous measure of ADHD symptomatology using brain morphometry and activation during tasks of working memory, inhibitory control, and reward processing, with separate models for each MRI measure. The best model using activation during the working memory task to predict ADHD symptomatology had an out-of-sample R = 2% and was robust to residualizing the effects of age, sex, race, parental income and education, handedness, pubertal status, and internalizing symptoms from ADHD symptomatology. This model used reduced activation in task positive regions and reduced deactivation in task negative regions to predict ADHD symptomatology. The best model with morphometry alone predicted ADHD symptomatology with an R = 1% but this effect dissipated when including covariates. The inhibitory control and reward tasks did not yield generalizable models. In summary, these analyses show, with a large and well-characterized sample, that the brain correlates of ADHD symptomatology are modest in effect size and captured best by brain morphometry and activation during a working memory task.

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The novel coronavirus pandemic that emerged in late 2019 (COVID-19) has created challenges not previously experienced in human research. This paper discusses two large-scale NIH-funded multi-site longitudinal studies of adolescents and young adults – the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study – and valuable approaches to learn about adaptive processes for conducting developmentally sensitive research with neuroimaging and neurocognitive testing across consortia during a global pandemic. We focus on challenges experienced during the pandemic and modifications that may guide other projects, such as implementing adapted protocols that protect the safety of participants and research staff, and addressing assessment challenges through the use of strategies such as remote and mobile assessments. Given the pandemic’s disproportionate impacts on participants typically underrepresented in research, we describe efforts to retain these individuals. The pandemic provides an opportunity to develop adaptive processes that can facilitate future studies’ ability to mobilize effectively and rapidly.

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Research on the importance of the family environment on children’s health behaviors is ubiquitous, yet critical gaps in the literature exist. Many studies have focused on one family characteristic and have relied on variable-centered approaches as opposed to person-centered approaches (e.g., latent profile analysis). The purpose of the current study was to use latent profile analysis to identify family typologies characterized by parental acceptance, parental monitoring, and family conflict, and to examine whether such typologies are associated with the number of movement behavior recommendations (i.e., physical activity, screen time, and sleep) met by children. Data for this cross-sectional observational study were part of the baseline data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Data were collected across 21 study sites in the United States. Participants included 10,712 children (female = 5143, males = 5578) aged 9 and 10 years (M = 9.91, SD = 0.62). Results showed that children were meaningfully classified into one of five family typologies. Children from families with and (P2; OR = 0.54; 95% CI, 0.39-0.76); , , and (P3; OR = 0.28; 95% CI, 0.20, 0.40); , , and (P4; OR = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.16, 0.36); and , , and (P5; OR = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.12-0.29) were less likely to meet all three movement behavior recommendations compared to children from families with , , and (P1). These findings highlight the importance of the family environment for promoting healthy movement behaviors among children.

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Structural models of psychopathology consistently identify internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) specific factors as well as a superordinate factor that captures their shared variance, the factor. Questions remain, however, about the meaning of these data-driven dimensions and the interpretability and distinguishability of the larger nomological networks in which they are embedded.

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Curiosity and intent to use alcohol in pre-adolescence is a risk factor for later experimentation and use, yet we know little of how curiosity about use develops. Here, we examine factors that may influence curiosity about alcohol use, as it may be an important predictor of later drinking behavior. Cross-sectional data on youth ages 10-11 from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ (ABCD) Study Year 1 follow-up were used (n = 2,334; NDA 2.0.1). All participants were substance-naïve at time of assessment. Group factor analysis identified latent factors across common indicators of risk for early substance use (i.e., psychopathology and trait characteristics; substance use attitudes/behaviors; neurocognition; family and environment). Logistic mixed-effect models tested associations between latent factors of risk for early substance use and curiosity about alcohol use, controlling for demographics and study site. Two multidimensional factors were significantly inversely and positively associated with greater curiosity about alcohol use, respectively: 1) low internalizing and externalizing symptomatology coupled with low impulsivity, perceived neighborhood safety, negative parental history of alcohol use problems, and fewer adverse life experiences and family conflict; and 2) low perceived risk of alcohol use coupled with lack of peer disapproval of use. When assessing all risk factors in an overall regression, lack of perceived harm from trying alcohol once or twice was associated with greater likelihood of alcohol curiosity. Taken together, perceptions that alcohol use causes little harm and having peers with similar beliefs is related to curiosity about alcohol use among substance-naïve 10-11-year-olds. General mental health and environmental risk factors similarly increase the odds of curiosity for alcohol. Identification of multidimensional risk factors for early alcohol use may point to novel prevention and early intervention targets. Future longitudinal investigations in the ABCD cohort will determine the extent to which these factors and curiosity predict alcohol use among youth.

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It is exciting to watch intersectionality travel from its roots in Black feminist activism and critical legal studies to increasingly more mainstream research domains such as psychology and psychopathology. We commend Mennies et al. (Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2020) for their application of the intersectionality framework to the study of psychopathology and treatment utilization in youth in the ABCD study. We argue, however, that this application falls short of its intersectional promise. We discuss some conceptual and methodological/analytical issues that evidence the focal article’s lack of alignment with intersectionality’s core tenets, particularly regarding the central role of power and social-structural factors as drivers of inequities across intersectional positions. Specifically, we discuss our concerns with the testing and flattening of intersectionality, the selection and operationalization of intersectional positions, and the use of conventional regression models as quantitative analytical approach. We end by suggesting ways that intersectionality can help reduce the inequities in psychopathology and treatment utilization identified by Mennies et al. (Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2020).

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A vast array of family processes is linked to child mental development, among which (1) low parental acceptance and (2) high family conflict are known as transdiagnostic risk factors for child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. In contrast to most prior research adopting cross-sectional or lagged designs, the current study applied fine-grained multilevel modeling to elucidate the complex relationships among parental acceptance, family conflict, and child psychopathology, considering the nesting structure of children within families and longitudinal changes within children. We focused on preadolescents from the two-wave Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N = 4,953; aged 9-12) and accounted for parental psychopathology and sex differences. Our findings suggest that consistent between-family and between-child differences in parental acceptance play a transdiagnostic role for both child internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, whereas family conflict is only significantly associated with externalizing psychopathology. Additionally, short-term within-family and within-child improvements in parental acceptance and family conflict across one year were associated with decreased externalizing, but not internalizing, psychopathology. These findings support the potential importance and feasibility of targeting these family process factors for child externalizing problems outside of an intensive treatment setting. We further discussed how such findings serve as a foundation for future research on family processes and child internalizing problems. The varying results across different grouping levels highlight the importance of decomposing within- from between-family/child effects in future studies on family processes and child psychopathology.

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A growing body of research has shown a diminished association between socioeconomic status (SES) indicators and a wide range of neuroimaging indicators for racial and ethnic minorities compared to majority groups. However, less is known about these effects for resting-state functional connectivity between various brain networks.

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Demographic factors may be associated with youth psychopathology due to social-contextual factors that may also pose barriers to intervention. Further, in line with intersectionality theory, youth with multiple non-dominant identities may be most likely to experience psychopathology and face barriers to care. This study examined rates of parent-reported psychopathology and mental health treatment utilization as a function of several demographic characteristics (in isolation and in concert) in a population-based, demographically diverse sample of 11,875 9- to 10-year-old youth. Results indicated most consistently that lower SES was associated with greater rates of psychopathology and greater likelihood of treatment utilization; that Asian American youth (relative to all other racial groups) and Hispanic/Latinx (relative to non-Hispanic/Latinx) youth were less likely to have a history of psychopathology or to have utilized treatment; and that male youth had greater rates of lifetime Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and were more likely to have utilized treatment. There was more modest support for interactive effects between demographic factors on psychopathology, which are discussed. The present study provides some support for differential rates of parent-reported psychopathology and treatment utilization as a function of demographic identities in youth. Potential explanations for these differences (e.g., cultural differences in symptom presentation; underreporting of symptoms) are discussed.

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In light of increasing cannabis use among pregnant women, the US Surgeon General recently issued an advisory against the use of marijuana during pregnancy.

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We compared the effects of parental education and household income on children’s body mass index (BMI) in Hispanic White (HW) and non-Hispanic White (NHW) families.

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Detentions and suspensions are common practices of school discipline, despite evidence that they are largely ineffective and disproportionately affect children from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly Black children, and children of lower socioeconomic status. However, few studies have examined suspension and detention rates among race, ethnicity, and family structure (single parent versus secondary caregiver) when controlling for typical behaviors associated with detention and suspension such as externalizing symptoms, age, sex, family income, family education, family conflict, and special education needs.

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Hurricane Irma was the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, displacing 6 million and killing over 120 people in the state of Florida alone. Unpredictable disasters like Irma are associated with poor cognitive and health outcomes that can disproportionately impact children. This study examined the effects of Hurricane Irma on the hippocampus and memory processes previously related to unpredictable stress. We used an innovative application of an advanced diffusion-weighted imaging technique, restriction spectrum imaging (RSI), to characterize hippocampal microstructure (i.e., cell density) in 9- to 10-year-old children who were exposed to Hurricane Irma relative to a non-exposed control group (i.e., assessed the year before Hurricane Irma). We tested the hypotheses that the experience of Hurricane Irma would be associated with decreases in: (a) hippocampal cellularity (e.g., neurogenesis), based on known associations between unpredictable stress and hippocampal alterations; and (b) hippocampal-related memory function as indexed by delayed recall. We show an association between decreased hippocampal cellularity and delayed recall memory in children who experienced Hurricane Irma relative to those who did not. These findings suggest an important role of RSI for assessing subtle microstructural changes related to functionally significant changes in the developing brain in response to environmental events.

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Preadolescence substance exposure, which increases the risk of regular substance use, has been a public health concern. Although studies found that impulsivity is a predisposing factor of early substance exposure, the pathways through which impulsivity is associated with early substance exposure remain unclear. This study examined how family conflict mediates this association among U.S. preteens as family environment plays an essential role in pre-adolescent development.

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Depression is a debilitating disorder that often starts manifesting in early childhood and peaks in onset during adolescence. Neurocognitive impairments have emerged as clinically important characteristics of depression, but it remains controversial which domains specifically index pre-existing vulnerability, state-related or trait-related markers. Here, we disentangled these effects by analysing the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development dataset (n = 4626). Using information of participants’ current and past mental disorders, as well as family mental health history, we identified low-risk healthy (n = 2100), high-risk healthy (n = 2023), remitted depressed (n = 401) and currently depressed children (n = 102). Factor analysis of 11 cognitive variables was performed to elucidate latent structure and canonical correlation analyses conducted to probe regional brain volumes reliably associated with the cognitive factors. Bayesian model comparison of various a priori hypotheses differing in how low-risk healthy, high-risk healthy, remitted depressed and currently depressed children performed in various cognitive domains was performed. Factor analysis revealed three domains: language and reasoning, cognitive flexibility and memory recall. Deficits in language and reasoning ability, as well as in volumes of associated regions such as the middle temporal and superior frontal gyrus, represented state- and trait-related markers of depression but not pre-existing vulnerability. In contrast, there was no compelling evidence of impairments in other domains. These findings-although cross-sectional and specific to 9-10-year-old children-might have important clinical implications, suggesting that cognitive dysfunction may not be useful targets of preventive interventions. Depressed patients, even after remission, might also benefit from less commonly used treatments such as cognitive remediation therapy.

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Although the effects of parental education and household income on children’s brain development are well established, less is known about possible variation in these effects across diverse racial and ethnic groups. According to the Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) phenomenon, due to structural racism, social stratification, and residential segregation, parental educational attainment and household income show weaker effects for non-White than White children. Built on the MDRs framework and conceptualizing race as a social rather than a biological factor, this study explored racial and ethnic variation in the magnitude of the effects of parental education and household income on children’s whole-brain cortical surface area. For this cross-sectional study, we used baseline socioeconomic and structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) data of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Our analytical sample was 10,262 American children between ages 9 and 10. The independent variables were parental education and household income. The primary outcome was the children’s whole-brain cortical surface area. Age, sex, and family marital status were covariates. Race and ethnicity were the moderators. We used mixed-effects regression models for data analysis as participants were nested within families and study sites. High parental education and household income were associated with larger children’s whole-brain cortical surface area. The effects of high parental education and high household income on children’s whole-brain cortical surface area were modified by race. Compared to White children, Black children showed a diminished return of high parental education on the whole-brain cortical surface area when compared to White children. Asian American children showed weaker effects of household income on the whole-brain cortical surface area when compared to White children. We could not find differential associations between parental education and household income with the whole-brain cortical surface area, when compared to White children, for non-Hispanic and Hispanic children. The effects of parental educational attainment and household income on children’s whole-brain cortical surface area are weaker in non-White than White families. Although parental education and income contribute to children’s brain development, these effects are unequal across racial groups.

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Considerable research has linked social determinants of health (SDoHs) such as race, parental education, and household income to school performance, and these effects may be in part due to working memory. However, a growing literature shows that these effects may be complex: while the effects of parental education may be diminished for Blacks than Whites, household income may explain such effects. Considering race as sociological rather than a biological construct (race as a proxy of racism) and built on Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs), this study explored complexities of the effects of SDoHs on children’s working memory. We borrowed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The total sample was 10,418, 9- and 10-year-old children. The independent variables were race, parental education, and household income. The primary outcome was working memory measured by the NIH Toolbox Card Sorting Test. Age, sex, ethnicity, and parental marital status were the covariates. To analyze the data, we used mixed-effect regression models. High parental education and household income were associated with higher and Black race was associated with lower working memory. The association between high parental education but not household income was less pronounced for Black than White children. This differential effect of parental education on working memory was explained by household income. For American children, parental education generates unequal working memory, depending on race. This means parental education loses some of its expected effects for Black families. It also suggests that while White children with highly educated parents have the highest working memory, Black children report lower working memory, regardless of their parental education. This inequality is mainly because of differential income in highly educated White and Black families. This finding has significant public policy and economic implications and suggests we need to do far more than equalizing education to eliminate racial inequalities in children’s cognitive outcomes. While there is a need for multilevel policies that reduce the effect of racism and social stratification for middle-class Black families, equalizing income may have more returns than equalizing education.

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The thalamus is the hub of the brain and has a significant role in various brain activities.

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Due to a pattern known as Marginalization-related Diminished Returns (MDRs), historically oppressed non-Hispanic Black Americans show weaker effects of economic status on health and development, when compared to socially privileged non-Hispanic White Americans. Such MDRs are also documented for the effects of economic status on the school performance of non-Hispanic Black children. However, the existing knowledge is minimal on similar diminished returns on children’s intelligence.

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Those experiencing psychotic like experiences (PLEs) are at higher risk for suicide ideation and behavior. However, it is unclear if PLEs are related to suicide ideation and behavior in children, and whether other factors such as impulsivity or emotion dysregulation might moderate the relationship. We hypothesize that PLEs are associated with suicide ideation and behavior, with impulsivity and emotion dysregulation moderating this relationship, in middle childhood. History of PLEs, suicide ideation and behavior, depression, emotion dysregulation, and impulsivity were assessed for 10,624 children aged 9 to 10.9 years (47.8% female, 34.4% minority race, 20.0% Hispanic) as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ study. Hypotheses about associations between variables were assessed using hierarchical linear modeling. PLEs were associated with suicide ideation and suicide behavior even when controlling for depression severity. Emotion dysregulation and impulsivity were also associated with suicide ideation and moderated the relationship between PLEs and suicide ideation. Variation in suicide ideation due to impulsivity and emotion dysregulation appears to be strongest when people are experiencing low levels to no PLEs. Only impulsivity and PLEs were associated with suicide behavior. Depression was associated with suicide ideation, but not suicide behavior. PLEs may be an important risk factor for suicide ideation and behavior in 9 to 10-year-old children, comparable to adult and adolescent populations. When considering prevention of suicidality, these data suggest that considering the relations between PLEs, impulsivity and emotion dysregulation may be important.

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Considerable research has established a link between socioeconomic status (SES) and brain function. While studies have shown a link between poverty status and amygdala response to negative stimuli, a paucity of knowledge exists on whether neighborhood poverty is also independently associated with amygdala hyperactive response to negative stimuli.

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Screen media is among the most common recreational activities engaged in by children. The displacement hypothesis predicts that increased time spent on screen media activity (SMA) may be at the expense of engagement with other recreational activities, such as sport, music, and art. This study examined associations between non-educational SMA and recreational activity endorsement in 9-10-year-olds, when accounting for other individual (i.e., cognition, psychopathology), interpersonal (i.e., social environment), and sociodemographic characteristics.

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Executive functions (EFs) are important partly because they are associated with risk for psychopathology and substance use problems. Because EFs have been linked to white matter microstructure, we tested the prediction that fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in white matter tracts are associated with EFs and dimensions of psychopathology in children younger than the age of widespread psychoactive substance use.

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Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with several health-related outcomes, such as obesity and body mass index (BMI). However, we do not know whether SES is associated differently with children’s BMI from American Indian and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AIAN/NHPI) families when compared to non-Hispanic White (NHW) families.

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While age is associated with an increase in cognitive flexibility and executive functioning as a result of normal development during childhood, less is known about the effect of racial variation in children’s age-related cognitive development. The Marginalization-related Diminished Returns (MDRs) phenomenon suggests that, under racism, social stratification, segregation, and discrimination, individual-level economic and non-economic resources and assets show weaker effects on children’s development for marginalized, racialized, and minoritized families.

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is associated with an altered structure and function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). There is more to find out about how this association differs among diverse racial groups.

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The nucleus accumbens’ (NAc) size, function, and density influence individuals’ body mass index (BMI). However, little is known about racial and socioeconomic status (SES) differences in the role of NAc density as a predictor of childhood BMI.

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While parental education and family socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with an increase in children’s cognitive functioning, and less is known about racial variation in these effects. Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that, under racism and social stratification, family SES and particularly parental education show weaker effects on children’s tangible outcomes for marginalized, racialized, and minoritized families, particularly Blacks, compared to Whites. We conducted this study to compare the effect of parental education on children’s mental rotation abilities, as an important aspect of cognitive function, by race. This cross-sectional study included 11,135 9-10-year-old American children. Data came from baseline of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was parental education. The dependent variable, mental rotation, was measured by the Little Man Task. Ethnicity, gender, age, marital status, and household income were the covariates. Parental education was positively associated with mental rotation. However, parental education showed a weaker association with mental rotation in Black than in White families. This was documented by a significant interaction between race and parental education on children’s efficiency score. Parental education shows a weaker correlation with mental rotation of Black rather than White children, which is probably because of racism, social stratification, and discrimination. This finding is in line with the MDRs phenomenon and suggests that marginalization and racism may interfere with the influences of parental assets and resources and Black American children’s development.

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While increased household income is associated with overall decreased screen time for children, less is known about the effect of racial variation on this association. According to Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory, family income and other economic resources show weaker association with children’s developmental, behavioral, and health outcomes for racialized groups such as black families, due to the effect of racism and social stratification. In this study, we investigated the association, by race, between family income and children’s screen time, as a proxy of screen time. This longitudinal study followed 15,022 American children aged 9-11 over a 1-year period. The data came from the baseline of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was family income, and it was categorized as a three-level nominal variable. The dependent variable, screen time, was a continuous variable. Ethnicity, gender, parental education, and marital status were the covariates. The results showed that family income was inversely associated with children’s screen time. However, there was a weaker inverse association seen in black families when compared with white families. This was documented by a significant statistical interaction between race and family income on children’s screen time. Diminished association between family income and children’s screen time for black families, compared with white families, is similar to MDRs and reflects a health risk to high-income black children. In a society where race and skin color determine opportunities and treatment by society, children from middle class black families remain at risk across multiple domains. We should not assume that income similarly promotes the health of all racial and ethnic groups. Addressing health and behavioral inequalities requires interventions that go beyond equalizing socioeconomic resources for black families. Marginalization, racism, and poverty interfere with the normal family income-related development of American children.

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Racial minorities, particularly non-Hispanic Blacks in the US, experience weaker effects of family socioeconomic position (SEP) on tangible outcomes, a pattern called Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs). These MDRs are frequently shown for the effects of family SEP on immigrant adolescents’ school performance. As a result of these MDRs, immigrant adolescents from high SEP families show worse than expected cognitive outcomes, including but not limited to poor school performance. However, the existing knowledge is minimal about the role of executive function in explaining diminished returns of family SEP on adolescents’ outcomes. To investigate racial differences in the effects of parental human capital on adolescents’ executive function, we compared non-Hispanic White non-immigrant and immigrant adolescents for the effect of parental human capital on adolescents’ executive function. This was a cross-sectional analysis that included 2,723 non-twin non-Hispanic White adolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was parental human capital (parental educational attainment), treated as a continuous measure with a higher score reflecting higher subjective socioeconomic status. The primary outcome was adolescents’ executive function measured by the stop-signal task (SST). Age, sex, parental marital status, parental employment, family income, and financial difficulties. Immigration status was the effect modifier. Overall, high parental human capital was associated with higher task-based executive function. Immigration status showed statistically significant interactions with parental human capital on adolescents’ executive function outcomes. This interaction term suggested that high parental human capital has a smaller effect on increasing immigrants’ executive function compared to non-immigrant adolescents. The boosting effect of parental human capital on executive function is diminished for immigrants compared to non-immigrant adolescents. To minimize the inequalities in executive function-related outcomes such as school performance, we need to address the diminishing returns of existing resources for immigrants. Not only should we equalize groups based on their SEP but also equalize the marginal returns of their existing SEP. Such efforts require public policies that aim for equal processes. As such, social policies should address structural and societal barriers such as xenophobia, segregation, racism, and discrimination that hinder immigrant families’ ability to effectively utilize their resources. In a fair society, immigrant and non-immigrant families should be equally able to leverage their SEP resources and turn them into tangible outcomes.

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Positive urgency reflects a specific facet of impulsivity and correlates with several health-related risk behaviors such as obesity, food addiction, and substance use. However, less is known about whether positive urgency is similarly or differently associated with high body mass index (BMI) across diverse racial groups.

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There are significant knowledge gaps of the vulnerabilities faced by youth from families with histories of alcohol or substance misuse. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive assessment of problems experienced by substance-naive children with positive family histories of substance misuse (FHP).

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Considerable research has documented the effects of race and socioeconomic status (SES) on reward-seeking behaviors; however, less is known about the multiplicative effects of race and family SES on brain response to reward anticipation. Marginalization-related Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that family SES would show weaker effects on brain development of children in non-White families than in White families.

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Childhood obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCSs) are common and can be an early risk marker for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides a unique opportunity to characterize OCSs in a large normative sample of school-age children and to explore corticostriatal and task-control circuits implicated in pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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It is important to study the correlates of reward sensitivity since it predicts high-risk behaviors. While ageing reduces children’s reward sensitivity and its associated risk taking, there is more to find out about racial differences in regard to the effect of age on reward sensitivity. Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that resources and assets show weaker effects on Black children than White children.

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African American pre-adolescents are at a higher risk of risky behaviors such as aggression, drug use, alcohol use, and subsequent poor outcomes compared to Caucasian pre-adolescents. All these high-risk behaviors are connected to low levels of inhibitory control (IC).

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The prevalence of risky behavior such as substance use increases during adolescence; however, the neurobiological precursors to adolescent substance use remain unclear. Predictive modeling may complement previous work observing associations with known risk factors or substance use outcomes by developing generalizable models that predict early susceptibility. The aims of the current study were to identify and characterize behavioral and brain models of vulnerability to future substance use. Principal components analysis (PCA) of behavioral risk factors were used together with connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) during rest and task-based functional imaging to generate predictive models in a large cohort of nine- and ten-year-olds enrolled in the Adolescent Brain & Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (NDA release 2.0.1). Dimensionality reduction (n = 9,437) of behavioral measures associated with substance use identified two latent dimensions that explained the largest amount of variance: risk-seeking (PC1; e.g., curiosity to try substances) and familial factors (PC2; e.g., family history of substance use disorder). Using cross-validated regularized regression in a subset of data (Year 1 Fast Track data; n>1,500), functional connectivity during rest and task conditions (resting-state; monetary incentive delay task; stop signal task; emotional n-back task) significantly predicted individual differences in risk-seeking (PC1) in held-out participants (partial correlations between predicted and observed scores controlling for motion and number of frames [r]: 0.07-0.21). By contrast, functional connectivity was a weak predictor of familial risk factors associated with substance use (PC2) (r: 0.03-0.06). These results demonstrate a novel approach to understanding substance use vulnerability, which-together with mechanistic perspectives-may inform strategies aimed at early identification of risk for addiction.

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The default mode network (DMN) and dorsal attention network (DAN) demonstrate an intrinsic “anticorrelation” in healthy adults, which is thought to represent the functional segregation between internally and externally directed thought. Reduced segregation of these networks has been proposed as a mechanism for cognitive deficits that occurs in many psychiatric disorders, but this association has rarely been tested in pre-adolescent children. The current analysis used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study to examine the relationship between the strength of DMN/DAN anticorrelation and psychiatric symptoms in the largest sample to date of 9- to 10-year-old children (N = 6543). The relationship of DMN/DAN anticorrelation to a battery of neuropsychological tests was also assessed. DMN/DAN anticorrelation was robustly linked to attention problems, as well as age, sex, and socioeconomic factors. Other psychiatric correlates identified in prior reports were not robustly linked to DMN/DAN anticorrelation after controlling for demographic covariates. Among neuropsychological measures, the clearest correlates of DMN/DAN anticorrelation were the Card Sort task of executive function and cognitive flexibility and the NIH Toolbox Total Cognitive Score, although these did not survive correction for socioeconomic factors. These findings indicate a complicated relationship between DMN/DAN anticorrelation and demographics, neuropsychological function, and psychiatric problems.

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The association between poverty and unfavorable cognitive outcomes is robust, but most research has focused on individual household socioeconomic status (SES). There is increasing evidence that neighborhood context explains unique variance not accounted for by household SES.

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While race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) impact brain structures such as the amygdala, less is known on whether or not family SES partially explains why amygdala volume is smaller for racial and ethnic minority groups.

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To investigate sex differences in the association between cortical thickness and behavioral inhibition of 9-10 years old American children.

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While low socioeconomic status (SES) introduces risk for developmental outcomes among children, there are an array of proximal processes that determine the ecologies and thus the lived experiences of children. This study examined interrelations between 22 proximal measures in the economic, psychosocial, physiological, and perinatal ecologies of children, in association with brain structure and cognitive performance in a diverse sample of 8,158 9-10-year-old children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. SES was measured by the income-to-needs ratio (INR), a measure used by federal poverty guidelines. Within the ABCD study, in what is one of the largest and most diverse cohorts of children studied in the United States, we replicate associations of low SES with lower total cortical surface area and worse cognitive performance. Associations between low SES (<200% INR) and measures of development showed the steepest increases with INR, with apparent increases still visible beyond the level of economic disadvantage in the range of 200-400% INR. Notably, we found three latent factors encompassing positive ecologies for children across the areas of economic, psychosocial, physiological, and perinatal well-being in association with better cognitive performance and the higher total cortical surface area beyond the effects of SES. Specifically, latent factors encompassing youth perceived social support and perinatal well-being were positive predictors of developmental measures for all children, regardless of SES. Further, we found a general latent factor that explained relationships between 20 of the proximal measures and encompassed a joint ecology of higher social and economic resources relative to low adversity across psychosocial, physiological, and perinatal domains. The association between the resource-to-adversity latent factor and cognitive performance was moderated by SES, such that for children in higher SES households, cognitive performance progressively increased with these latent factor scores, while for lower SES, cognitive performance increased only among children with the highest latent factor scores. Our findings suggest that both positive ecologies of increased access to resources and lower adversity are mutually critical for promoting better cognitive development in children from low SES households. Our findings inform future studies aiming to examine positive factors that influence healthier development in children.

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Variation in liability to cannabis use disorder has a strong genetic component (estimated twin and family heritability about 50-70%) and is associated with negative outcomes, including increased risk of psychopathology. The aim of the study was to conduct a large genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify novel genetic variants associated with cannabis use disorder.

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The study aimed to investigate sex differences in the boosting effects of household income on children’s executive function in the US. This is a cross-sectional study using data from Wave 1 of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Wave 1 ABCD included 8608 American children between ages 9 and 10 years old. The independent variable was household income. The primary outcome was executive function measured by the stop-signal task. Overall, high household income was associated with higher levels of executive function in the children. Sex showed a statistically significant interaction with household income on children’s executive function, indicating a stronger effect of high household income for female compared to male children. Household income is a more salient determinant of executive function for female compared to male American children. Low-income female children remain at the highest risk regarding poor executive function.

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