Research Publications

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To determine the relationship between various measures of neighborhood quality and adolescent screen use in a demographically diverse, U.S. cohort of early adolescents.

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Youth substance use increases risk for developing substance use disorders. Previous work using the longitudinal ABCD Study® found distinct neurocognitive factors contribute to youth tobacco and alcohol initiation. Using data for 7776 ABCD Study® participants, this study expands prior work to examine prospective associations between early neurocognitive factors (general ability, executive function, learning and memory, and visuospatial and mental rotation) at ages 9-10 years (sample enrolled 2016-2018) and cannabis use by ages 13-14 years. We also test whether positive and negative tobacco smoking, alcohol, and cannabis expectancies mediate associations between neurocognitive factors and substance use initiation. Higher performance in general ability was associated with increased risk [OR = 1.23, 95 % CI 1.07-1.42] for cannabis use; positive cannabis expectancies mediated 72.6 % (p-value = 0.003) of the effect [Indirect effect: OR = 1.16, 95 % CI 1.12-1.20] and negative expectancies mediated -10.2 % (p-value = 0.04) of the effect [Indirect effect: OR = 0.98, 95 % CI 0.97-0.99]. Accuracy in visuospatial reasoning was protective [OR = 0.83, 95 % CI 0.73-0.95)] for cannabis use; the effect was not mediated by expectancies. Positive alcohol use expectancy mediated 36.3 % of the association between general ability and early alcohol use [OR = 1.15, 95 % CI 1.05-1.25; Indirect effect: OR = 1.05, 95 % CI 1.03-1.07]. Associations with early tobacco use were independent of tobacco expectancies. Developmentally appropriate expectancy-based interventions lowering positive expectancies and bolstering negative expectancies may be effective for preventing youth cannabis initiation. Interventions lowering positive alcohol expectancies may help prevent youth alcohol use.

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Social media exposure may influence early cannabis use behaviors in adolescents, potentially increasing the risk of future problematic use. Minimal prior research has investigated the role of cannabis expectancies (i.e., beliefs about the anticipated positive or negative effects of cannabis) and their role in mediating cannabis use initiation in early adolescence.

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In task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), collinearity between task regressors in time series models may impact power. When collinearity is identified after data collection, researchers often modify the model in an effort to reduce collinearity. However, some model adjustments are suboptimal and may introduce bias into parameter estimates. Although relevant to many task-fMRI studies, we highlight these issues using the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We introduce a procedure to more directly quantify the impact of collinearity on task-relevant measures: a contrast-based variance inflation factor (cVIF). We also show that collinearity reduction strategies-such as omitting regressors for specific task components, using impulse regressors for extended activations, and ignoring response time variability-can bias contrast estimates. Finally, we present a “Saturated” model that includes all task components, including response times, aiming to reduce these biases while maintaining comparable levels of collinearity, as assessed by cVIF.

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Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) youth are at high risk for self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB) including suicidal ideation, nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI), and suicide attempt. We compared total SITB endorsements during a 4-year period among 3 groups: TGD youth with high gender-related social stress (TGD+High-Stress); TGD youth with low gender-related social stress (TGD+Low-Stress); and non-TGD youth. We further identified risk and resiliency correlates of 3 longitudinal SITB trajectories (NSSI, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempt), accounting for gender-related social stress and other known robust risk factors.

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Childhood ADHD is associated with greater risk of depression in adolescence and adulthood, with emotion regulation (ER) identified as a potential mediator. However, it remains unclear how distinct domains of ER differentially relate to ADHD and depression symptoms in early adolescence.

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability. While neuroanatomical abnormalities in adults with MDD have been widely investigated, atypical brain development in early adolescents with MDD remains largely unexplored. This study utilized the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) dataset, including baseline and two-year follow-up data. Participants were divided into MDD (n = 126) and healthy control (HC, n = 7543) groups. To address baseline group imbalances, propensity score matching (PSM) was applied. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine the group × time interaction effects on cortical volume, adjusting for intracranial volume (ICV), age, and sex. Post-hoc analyses further explored the cortical structural development patterns in both groups. Three distinct patterns of cortical volume changes were observed in MDD participants aged 10-11 years. The first pattern showed decreased cortical volume across widespread regions, including frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes in MDD, while the HC group remained stable. The second pattern indicated increases in the orbitofrontal, precentral, and anterior cingulate cortices in HC, while the MDD group remained stable. The third pattern revealed significant cortical reductions in MDD participants in the inferior and middle temporal regions and posterior cingulate cortex, contrasting with increases in the HC group. These atypical developmental trajectories suggest distinct genetic and and biological processes underlying early adolescent MDD, underscoring the importance of early identification of neurodevelopmental deviations to guide targeted prevention and intervention strategies.

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Psychotic-Like Experiences (PLEs) during early adolescence may precede development of later psychotic disorders. Given evidence of environmental challenges contributing to the psychotic disorder psychopathology, this study examined if child temperament mediates the association between the family environment and PLEs.

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Given the association of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) among adolescents/adults, and the high prevalence of SITBs in preadolescents, this study aims to identify modifiable preadolescent factors by investigating the sleep problems’ mediating role.

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Impulsivity is among the strongest correlates of substance involvement (i.e. a broad continuum of substance-related behaviors), and distinct domains (e.g. sensation seeking [SS] and urgency) are differentially correlated, phenotypically and genetically, with unique substance involvement stages. Examining whether polygenic influences for distinct impulsivity domains are differentially predictive of early substance use initiation – a major risk factor for later problematic use – may improve our understanding of the role of impulsivity in addiction etiology.

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Adolescence is a critical period of neural development and a sensitive window for the emergence of psychiatric symptoms. Resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) provides a unique opportunity to investigate brain-behavior associations. However, the role of sex-specific differences in these associations remains underexplored, despite their potential to reveal heterogeneous neurobiological mechanisms and guide personalized interventions. In this study, we analyzed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, comprising 7,892 adolescents (9-10 years old, 3,896 females). Using Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and a rigorous cross-validation framework, we identified associations between cortical-to-cortical (Cor-Cor) and cortical-to-subcortical (Cor-Sub) functional connectivity and eight symptom domains from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Unlike previous approaches, we directly examined sex differences within the brain-behavior mappings by applying separate CCA models in boys and girls to uncover differential connectivity-behavior relationships. Our analysis uncovered two reproducible components for both Cor-Cor and Cor-Sub mappings on the whole cohort (r = 0.130, p < 0.001, r = 0.122, p < 0.01 for Cor-Cor; r = 0.157, p < 0.001, r = 0.115, p < 0.01 for Cor-Sub). Importantly, sex-stratified analyses revealed distinct patterns of brain-behavior associations. Among females, high loadings on attention and thought problems were linked to high loadings on default mode network, whereas in males, attention and thought problems were linked to sensorimotor networks. Compared to females, males also had higher loadings on internalizing symptoms, such as anxious/depressed and withdrawn/depressed symptoms, coupled with lower loadings on putamen and hippocampus functional connectivity. These findings suggest there may be fundamentally different brain-behavior mappings across the sexes in adolescence, in addition to previously reported sex differences in functional connectivity and behavioral profiles. By revealing sex-specific neural correlates of psychiatric symptoms in early adolescence, this study paves the way for sex-informed strategies in clinical risk assessment and personalized treatment design.

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Earlier timing and faster tempo of puberty have been associated with altered brain development and increased mental health problems in adolescents, particularly females. However, the role of oestradiol (E2) in these associations is unclear.

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The COVID-19 pandemic had profound effects on developing adolescents that, to date, remain incompletely understood. Youth with preexisting mental health problems and associated brain alterations were at increased risk for higher stress and poor mental health. This study investigated impacts of adolescent pre-pandemic mental health problems and their neural correlates on stress, negative emotions and poor mental health during the first 15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. N = 2,641 adolescents (median age = 12.0 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort were studied, who had pre-pandemic data on anxiety, depression, and behavioral (attention, aggression, social withdrawal, internalizing, externalizing) problems, longitudinal survey data on mental health, stress and emotions during the first 15 months following the outbreak, structural MRI, and resting-state fMRI. Data were analyzed using mixed effects mediation and moderation models. Preexisting mental health and behavioral problems predicted higher stress, negative affect and negative emotions (β = 0.09-0.21, CI=[0.03,0.32]), and lower positive affect (β = -0.21 to -0.09, CI=[-0.31,-0.01]) during the first ~6 months of the outbreak. Pre-pandemic structural characteristics of brain regions supporting social function and emotional processing (insula, superior temporal gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, and the cerebellum) mediated some of these relationships (β = 0.10-0.15, CI=[0.01,0.24]). The organization of pre-pandemic brain circuits moderated (attenuated) associations between preexisting mental health and pandemic stress and negative emotions (β = -0.17 to -0.06, CI=[-0.27,-0.01]). Preexisting mental health problems and their structural brain correlates were risk factors for youth stress and negative emotions during the early months of the outbreak. In addition, the organization of some brain circuits was protective and attenuated the effects of preexisting mental health issues on youth responses to the pandemic’s stressors.

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Brain-wide association studies using functional MRI have advanced our understanding of how behavioral traits relate to individual variability in brain function. These studies typically identify functional connectivity (FC) patterns linked to behavioral traits using either whole-brain or region-wise predictive models. However, whole-brain models often struggle with generalizability and interpretability due to the high dimensionality of FC data, while region-wise models isolate predictions, limiting their ability to capture the integrated contributions of brain-wide FC patterns. In this study, we introduce an interpretable predictive model that learns fine-grained FC patterns predictive of behavioral traits, jointly at the regional and participant levels, to characterize the overall association of FC patterns with a target trait. Our model jointly learns a relevance score and a dedicated prediction function for each brain region, then integrates the regional predictions using the relevance scores as weights to generate a participant-level prediction, capturing the collective association of FC patterns with the trait. We validated our method using FC data from 6,798 participants in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to predict cognition. Our model identified the cingulo-parietal, retrosplenial-temporal, dorsal attention, and cingulo-opercular networks as collectively predictive of cognitive traits, achieved competitive prediction accuracy, and enabled detailed characterization of fine-grained FC differences across cognitive domains. The learned relevance scores enhanced region-wise predictions of longitudinal cognitive measures in the ABCD cohort and cognitive traits in the Human Connectome Project Development cohort. These findings suggest that our method effectively characterizes generalizable and fine-grained FC patterns linked to cognition in youth.

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It is unknown whether brain-based predictive models derived from sleep features are useful for the clinical diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD).

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Environmental factors have long been shown to influence brain structure and adolescent psychopathology. However, almost no research has included environmental factors spanning micro-to-macro-systems, brain structure, and psychopathology in an integrated framework. Here, we assessed the ways and degree to which multisystem environmental factors during late childhood are associated with subcortical volume and psychopathology during early adolescence.

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Suicide attempt (SA) risk is especially high among youth with early nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) onset and persistent NSSI. Still, few youth experience persistent NSSI, and few attempt suicide. Identifying which youth follow specific NSSI trajectories and which NSSI trajectories are at higher risk for SA has strong potential to inform more targeted early suicide risk identification and prevention. The present study aimed to identify NSSI trajectories, identify characteristics forecasting which NSSI trajectories youth followed, and compare SA risk across trajectories.

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Sleep disturbance is highly prevalent during childhood and adolescence, dramatically affecting their emotional and behavioral development. However, its developmental patterns and contributing factors remain underexplored. This study aimed to evaluate the longitudinal associations of sleep disturbance trajectories with genetic and environmental risk factors, as well as mental health outcomes, from late childhood to early adolescence. Data were drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, with annual assessments of sleep disturbance. A total of 11,509 children were categorized into four distinct trajectories via growth mixture modeling: decreasing, persistent high, increasing, and persistent low. Multinomial logistic regression revealed that the decreasing trajectory was characterized by improvements in caregiver mental health and school experience. In contrast, both the increasing and persistent high trajectories exhibited worsening caregiver mental health, school experience, and elevated family conflict. Additionally, among children of European ancestry, the increasing trajectory was significantly associated with polygenic risk scores for insomnia. Regarding outcomes, the decreasing trajectory predicted reductions in internalizing, externalizing, and total problems, while the increasing trajectory predicted worsening psychopathology. This study highlights the importance of jointly considering genetic and environmental factors in identifying children at risk for adverse sleep trajectories. Targeted early interventions addressing familial and school domains may enhance both sleep and mental health during this critical developmental period.

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To examine factors associated with well-being among sexual minority adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Children with conduct problems are at elevated risk for negative psychosocial, educational, and behavioral outcomes. Identifying at-risk children can aid in providing timely intervention and prevention, ultimately improving their long-term outcomes. There is a need to develop screening tools to better identify at-risk children who may benefit from early intervention.

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The Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) is an established tool for screening autism. An increasing number of studies have utilized the SRS in the general population as an outcome measure to gain insight into the etiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, SRS scores have not been well characterized in large pediatric cohorts, particularly in relation to their demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and comorbidity profiles, or how these patterns compare to those observed in clinically diagnosed ASD. This study included 9788 non-ASD children and 182 autistic children aged 9-11 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Generalized linear mixed-effect models were applied to evaluate the associations of short social responsiveness scale (SSRS) with a spectrum of demographic, genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral characteristics. We estimated the heritability of SSRS using a subsample of twin and sibling data. Our finding revealed that children with higher SSRS exhibited a higher male-to-female ratio. SSRS had a high heritability of 0.52 (95% CI, 0.45-0.63), and higher SSRS scores were correlated with increased polygenic risk for ASD (P < 0.001). Neuroimaging analyses identified both overlapping and unique neurobiological underpinnings, with sex-specific variations in structural and functional connectivity similar to those observed in ASD. Higher SSRS scores were linked to lower fluid intelligence, more behavioral problems, more sleep problems, and more psychotic-like symptoms. These findings highlight both the overlap and distinction between patterns reflected in SSRS scores and those observed in clinical ASD, highlighting the need for caution when interpreting findings only utilizing SRS as the outcome for autistic-like trait.

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The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study represents a pioneering initiative that aims to unravel the complexities of behavioral and neural development in youth. In this paper, we address the challenges inherent in extracting meaningful insights from the extensive data compiled by the ABCD initiative. Our focus is on advocating for best practices in reproducible research, interpretation of effect size, and reporting of principled results. Central to this discourse is a detailed examination of effect sizes within the expansive ABCD dataset, and how they can be meaningfully interpreted in the context of large-scale research. We describe the hurdles associated with transitioning from conventional small-sample studies to the opportunities and challenges of large samples, including the phenomenon of statistically significant but practically trivial effects. To promote transparent and rigorous inference, we present a four-part framework to evaluate observed effects: researchers should define a smallest effect size of interest (SESOI), compare estimates to relevant benchmarks, test whether observed effects exceed meaningful thresholds (e.g., through equivalence testing), and visualize results to enhance interpretation and communication. Applying this framework yields a clearer, more cumulative understanding of effect size interpretation and contributes substantively to the refinement of scientific practices within adolescent brain and cognitive development research.

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Atlas-free continuous structural connectivity has garnered increasing attention due to the limitations of atlas-based approaches, including the arbitrary selection of brain atlases and potential information loss. Typically, continuous structural connectivity is represented by a probability density function, with kernel density estimation as a common estimation method. However, constructing an appropriate kernel function on the cortical surface poses significant challenges. Current methods often inflate the cortical surface into a sphere and apply the spherical heat kernel, introducing distortions to density estimation. In this study, we propose a novel approach using the Riemannian diffusion kernel derived from the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the cortical surface to smooth streamline endpoints into a continuous density. Our method inherently accounts for the complex geometry of the cortical surface and exhibits computational efficiency, even with dense tractography datasets. Additionally, we investigate the number of streamlines or fiber tracts required to achieve a reliable continuous representation of structural connectivity. Through simulations and analyses of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we demonstrate the potential of the Riemannian diffusion kernel in enhancing the estimation and analysis of continuous structural connectivity.

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Symptoms of psychopathology vary across people, limiting inferences about origins and treatments of disorders for any one person. The high-dimensional symptom space (HDSS) model offers a novel framework for understanding psychopathology by representing symptoms as vectors within a multidimensional space. Unlike traditional categorical and dimensional models, HDSS uses geometric distances to empirically characterize a person’s unique experience of symptoms, with the option to integrate social and cultural factors for more precise, personalized treatments. Using data from the adolescent brain and cognitive development (ABCD) study, we demonstrate that HDSS preserves individual specificity, effectively captures dynamic trajectories of psychological distress, and accommodates clinical heterogeneity. Results indicate that HDSS distances correspond to symptom severity and capture nuanced patterns of psychological distress over time, offering a comprehensive and individualized understanding of psychopathology. This model allows for a person-centered understanding of psychopathology, highlighting unique symptom patterns and their evolution over time. HDSS represents a significant advancement in personalized psychological care, providing a data-driven framework for understanding psychopathology symptoms, and implementing effective interventions.

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We aimed to classify youth using a longitudinal, multidimensional construct of gender, and examine associations of gender subgroups with substance cognitions and substance use. We used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study ( = 11,868 youth ages 9-10 years at baseline [2016-2018] through the year 4 follow-up [ages 13-14 years, 2020-2022]) to conduct latent class models using measures of gender identity, felt gender, gender expression, and gender non-contentedness. We used multivariable logistic regression to assess associations of gender classes with curiosity to use, intention to use, and use of alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, and cannabis, respectively, adjusting for sociodemographic factors. A four-class model was selected based on model fit: transgender (2.5%), questioning (9.0%), naïve (36.3%), and cisgender (52.1%). Youth in the questioning and transgender classes were more likely to report curiosity to use alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, and cannabis (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] range 1.68-2.45, < 0.001) and intention to use alcohol and nicotine/tobacco (questioning youth; aOR range 1.69-1.88, < 0.01) or nicotine/tobacco and cannabis (transgender youth; aOR range 2.66-3.14, < 0.001) but not actual use of alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, and cannabis, whereas members of the naïve class were less likely to report curiosity to use alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, and cannabis, intention to use cannabis, and use of alcohol, nicotine/tobacco, and cannabis (aOR range 0.48-0.81, < 0.001), relative to cisgender youth. These findings suggest that a more nuanced understanding of gender among preadolescent youth and their heterogeneous risk for substance use is critical for the development of early prevention services. The timing of prevention efforts may be ideal during this developmental period.

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Internalizing disorders (depression, anxiety, somatic symptom disorder) are among the most common mental health conditions that can substantially reduce daily life function. Early adolescence is an important developmental stage for the increase in prevalence of internalizing disorders and understanding specific factors that predict their onset may be germane to intervention and prevention strategies.

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Music training has been associated with the development of cognitive and language skills, yet large-scale longitudinal studies exploring these relationships are still limited. Drawing on data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we examined the long-term associations between continuous music engagement and cognitive abilities, including the moderating role of neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation. We also applied classification models to distinguish musicians from non-musicians on the basis of their performance on cognitive tasks. Our findings revealed that children who are consistently engaged in music training for 2 years scored higher on multiple cognitive and language-based tasks, with greater gains in picture vocabulary over time compared to non-musicians. Socioeconomic factors moderated these effects, with non-musicians from high-deprivation neighborhoods demonstrating smaller improvements in picture vocabulary than their low-deprivation counterparts, whereas musicians across socioeconomic backgrounds exhibited similar improvements over time. Additionally, classification models identified a distinct profile in musicians, with cognitive performance serving as a key predictor of music engagement, distinguishing musicians from non-musicians. These findings reinforce the role of music training in supporting cognitive and language development and highlight its potential as a cognitive enrichment tool, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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Understanding sex differences in the adolescent brain is crucial, as they relate to sex-specific neurological and psychiatric conditions. Predicting sex from adolescent brain data may reveal how these differences influence neurodevelopment. Recently, attention has shifted toward socially-identified gender (distinct from sex assigned at birth) recognizing its explanatory power. This study evaluates whether resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), cortical thickness, or cortical volume better predicts sex and sex/gender alignment (congruence between sex and gender) in preadolescents. Using Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study data and machine learning, rsFC predicted sex more accurately (85 %) than cortical thickness (76 %) and cortical volume (70 %). Brain regions most predictive of sex belonged to association (default mode, dorsal attention, parietal memory) and visual networks. The rsFC classifier trained on sex/gender aligned youth classified more accurately unseen youth with sex/gender alignment (n = 2013) than unalignment (n = 1116). The female rsFC sex profile was positively associated with sex/gender alignment, while in males, there was a negative association. However, neither brain modality predicted sex/gender alignment. These findings suggest that while rsFC predicts sex in the adolescent brain more accurately, it does not directly capture sex/gender alignment, underscoring the need for further investigation into the neural underpinnings of gender.

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Racial and ethnic discrimination has lasting consequences for adolescent functioning, yet its impact on adolescent brain development is relatively understudied. Identifying the neural circuits affected by discrimination can reveal key insights into brain plasticity and resilience. This pre-registered, multi-method study examined the longitudinal effect of racial/ethnic discrimination on one indicator of executive function via resting state functional connectivity among 4669 adolescents of color (e.g., 44 % Latinx, 43 % Black, 13 % Asian, 8 % Native American) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study. Further, we explored familism and school support as social-environmental buffers. Greater discrimination impeded adolescents’ performance on the Flanker test of selective attention and inhibitory control via longitudinal effects on connectivity between the attention networks, specifically among youth evincing low familism. Among adolescents reporting low school support, greater discrimination was associated with heightened dorsal attention-salience network connectivity. Findings offer initial evidence for the neurobiological processes impacted by discrimination and social-environmental strengths that may “break the link” between discrimination and brain function.

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Social isolation during development, especially in adolescence, has detrimental but incompletely understood effects on the brain. This study investigated the neural correlates of preference for solitude and social withdrawal in a sample of 2809 youth [median (IQR) age = 12.0 (1.1) years, 1440 (51.26%) females] from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Older youth whose parents had mental health issues more frequently preferred solitude and/or were socially withdrawn (β = 0.04 to 0.14, CI = [0.002, 0.19], P < 0.05), both of which were associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors, depression, and anxiety (β = 0.25 to 0.45, CI = [0.20, 0.49], P < 0.05). Youth who preferred solitude and/or were socially withdrawn had lower cortical thickness in regions involved in social function (cuneus, insula, anterior cingulate, and superior temporal gyri) and/or mental health (β = -0.09 to -0.02, CI = [-0.14, -0.003], P < 0.05), and higher amygdala, entorhinal cortex, parahippocampal gyrus, and basal ganglia volume (β = 2.62 to 668.10, CI = [0.13, 668.10], P < 0.05). Youth who often preferred solitude had more topologically segregated dorsal attention, temporoparietal, and social networks (β = 0.07 to 0.10, CI = [0.02, 0.14], P ≤ 0.03). Socially withdrawn youth had a less topologically robust and efficient (β = -0.05 to -0.80, CI = [-1.34,-0.01], P < 0.03) and more fragile cerebellum (β = 0.04, CI = [0.01, 0.07], P < 0.05). These findings suggest that social isolation in adolescence may be a risk factor for widespread alterations in brain regions supporting social function and mental health.

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Serum and Glucocorticoid-regulated Kinase 1 (SGK1) is elevated in hippocampal neurons following glucocorticoid exposure and in peripheral blood of depressed patients. However, its mechanistic role in psychopathology and its relevance to the human brain are unknown. To address this gap, we investigated human postmortem brain tissue and found higher SGK1 expression in the hippocampus of depressed suicide decedents compared to healthy subjects who died of natural causes. We observed the highest levels of SGK1 in subjects with reported early life adversity (ELA) – a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders. To determine potential genetic factors underlying increased SGK1 in the hippocampus, we computed expression-based polygenic risk scores (ePRS) for a large population sample from the ABCD study and found that a collection of genetic variants associated with high hippocampal SGK1 expression predicts depression severity and moderates associations between ELA, depressive symptoms, and suicide attempts. Similar to the human brain, hippocampal SGK1 expression was increased in mouse models of ELA, adult chronic stress, and chronic corticosterone exposure, and hippocampal-specific knockdown of SGK1 conferred resilience to stress-induced behavior abnormalities. To test SGK1 as a potential therapeutic target, we injected mice with the small molecule inhibitor, GSK650394, and found that pharmacological inhibition conferred stress resilience, increased adult hippocampal neurogenesis, and rescued stress-induced dentate gyrus hyperactivity. Our cross-species findings reveal a novel role for hippocampal SGK1 in stress resilience, highlight an interaction between ELA and SGK1 on depression and suicide risk, and establish for the first time a functional role for SGK1 in stress-induced psychopathology.

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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data are often used to inform individual differences in cognitive, behavioral, and psychiatric phenotypes. These so-called “brain-behavior” association studies come in many flavors and are increasingly the focus of investigations utilizing large population neuroscience datasets. Still, many open questions surrounding the utility of task and resting state fMRI for modelling brain-behavior relationships remain, including the feasibility of conducting these investigations in developmental cohorts. With the growing availability of large neurodevelopmental datasets such as that provided by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we are now able to conduct well-powered analyses using large samples of longitudinal neuroimaging data collected from diverse populations of youth. Here we provide a high-level review of current controversies and challenges in this growing subfield of neuroscience, highlighting examples where task fMRI data and resting state fMRI data – either in isolation or combined – have yielded significant insights into brain-behavior associations. Challenges include issues related to measurement noise, appropriate estimation of effect sizes, and limits to generalizability due to insufficient diversity of samples. Innovative solutions involving advanced MRI data acquisition protocols, application of multivariate analysis methods, and more robust consideration of phenotypic complexity are reviewed. We propose that additional future directions for developmental cognitive neuroscience should include more reliable behavioral measures, multimodal neuroimaging brain-behavior studies, and greater consideration of environmental and other contextual influences on brain-behavior associations.

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Family history (FH) of substance use disorders (SUDs) and stressful life events (SLEs) are known risk factors for SUDs in adolescents and young adults. Cross-sectional studies suggest that FH and SLEs affect adolescent white matter (WM) development and form abnormal WM patterns. Here, we examined the effects of FH, SLEs and their interaction on WM integrity in youths in the Adolescent Cognitive Brain Development (ABCD) study at baseline and 2- and 4-year follow-ups. ABCD youths (N = 8939, age ± SD = 9.9 ± 0.6 years, 4302 female) completed baseline diffusion tensor imaging, of which 5661 repeated the scan at 2-year follow-up (age ± SD = 12.0 ± 0.7 years, 2634 female) and 2177 at 4-year follow-up (age ± SD = 14.1 ± 0.7 years, 1007 female). FH was measured as the weighted sum of biological parents and grandparents with alcohol and/or drug problems. SLEs were measured with parental report of life events. WM integrity was measured with fractional anisotropy (FA) of 23 WM tracts. Linear mixed effect models were used to examine the effects of FH, SLEs and their interaction on FA at baseline and longitudinally, modelling family and study site as random intercepts and correcting for multiple comparisons with false discovery rate (FDR) q = 0.05. At baseline, there were no significant effects of FH, SLEs and their interaction on FA after multiple comparison correction when controlling for race, family income and parental education. From baseline to 4-year follow-up, FH significantly negatively interacted with newly occurred SLEs on FA in 19 out of 23 tracts, so that FA at 4-year was lower in youths with both FH and newly occurred SLEs when controlling for baseline FA (β = -0.049 - -0.018, p = 6.2 × 10 - 4.7 × 10). These negative interactions were not significant with shorter time spans (baseline to 2-year follow-up and 2- to 4-year follow-up). In conclusion, we replicated findings from cross-sectional cohorts of the effects of FH and SLEs on lower WM integrity in youths. The study utilized Big Data longitudinal design to show that FH-by-SLE interaction, rather than their independent effects was responsible for developmental WM changes associated with FH of SUDs and life stressors.

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Psychiatry is undergoing a shift toward precision medicine, demanding personalized approaches that capture the complexity of cognition and behavior. Here, we introduce a novel referential of four robust, replicable, and generalizable cognitive and behavioral profiles. These were derived from a large pediatric cohort (ABCD: n = 10,843) and validated in two independent cohorts (BANDA: n = 195 and GESTE: n = 271) regrouping children aged 9-17 years. We demonstrate the profiles’ longitudinal stability and consistency with clinical diagnoses in the general population while exposing critical discrepancies across parent-reported, youth-reported, and expert-derived diagnoses. Beyond validation, we showcase the real-world utility of our approach by linking profiles to environmental factors, revealing associations between parental influences and youths’ cognition and behavior. Our fuzzy profiling framework moves beyond discrete classification, offering a powerful tool to refine psychiatric evaluation and intervention. We provide an open-source framework, enabling researchers and clinicians to fast-track implementation and foster a data-driven, domain-based approach to diagnosis.

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Housing insecurity is now widespread among US youth. Evidence is limited, however, on how that is affecting their mental health. Longitudinal analyses examining specific, policy-modifiable forms of housing insecurity are especially lacking. We thus estimated associations between two housing exposures (1. eviction, 2. family inability to pay housing bills) and youth mental health over time, including sleep disturbances. To do so, we analyzed all available waves of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study, a national cohort of US youth (n=11,868, aged 9-13; 2016-2021). Models adjusted for individual-level fixed effects and time-varying sociodemographic characteristics. Results show eviction and inability to pay rent/mortgage were both associated with worse mental health, including more severe internalizing, externalizing, and sleep disturbance symptoms. In models including both housing exposures, eviction associations were attenuated, while estimates for inability to pay were effectively unchanged. Given the prevalence of families having difficulty paying housing bills, findings suggest a large pool of young people whose mental well-being may be adversely affected. If these associations reflect cause, government efforts to prevent evictions (e.g., right to counsel in housing court) or lower housing cost burden (cash assistance, public housing, zoning reform, etc.) would have important benefits for young people’s psychological wellness.

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In-scanner head motion introduces systematic bias to resting-state fMRI functional connectivity (FC) not completely removed by denoising algorithms. Researchers studying traits associated with motion (e.g. psychiatric disorders) need to know if their trait-FC relationships are impacted by residual motion to avoid reporting false positive results. We devised Split Half Analysis of Motion Associated Networks (SHAMAN) to assign a motion impact score to specific trait-FC relationships. SHAMAN distinguishes between motion causing overestimation or underestimation of trait-FC effects. We assessed 45 traits from n = 7270 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. After standard denoising with ABCD-BIDS and without motion censoring, 42% (19/45) of traits had significant (p < 0.05) motion overestimation scores and 38% (17/45) had significant underestimation scores. Censoring at framewise displacement (FD) < 0.2 mm reduced significant overestimation to 2% (1/45) of traits but did not decrease the number of traits with significant motion underestimation scores.

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Weight discrimination is associated with adverse outcomes, including eating disorder (ED) symptoms, but few longitudinal studies have investigated this relationship in early adolescence. We examined the prospective association of weight discrimination with ED symptoms one year later in early adolescents, and the extent to which this association was moderated by body mass index (BMI) percentile and sex.

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Childhood brain development involves dynamic remodeling shaped by genetic influences contributing to long-term neurodevelopmental variation. Here we report integrative analyses of over 8600 children, using 7 brain imaging-derived phenotype (IDP) modalities, polygenic scores (PGS) of 33 complex traits, and 266 cognitive and psychological phenotypes. Most brain IDPs show low-to-moderate SNP-based heritability, lower than typically observed in adults. Sparse generalized canonical correlation analysis reveals positive associations between cognitive-related PGS and structural MRI features (e.g., total grey matter and ventral diencephalon volumes) and N-back task-related activation, while PGS for ADHD, depression, and neuroticism showed negative associations. Cognitive PGS also correlates positively with diffusion MRI metrics (streamline counts, fractional anisotropy in subcortical-frontal tracts and inferior parietal-subcortical tracts), whereas health-risk PGS (e.g., BMI, ADHD) correlates negatively. This study delineates key gene-brain-behavior associations in preadolescence, providing a multivariate dissection of the polygenic architecture underlying neurodevelopment.

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Prior work suggests that living among people who share similar identities may be protective against psychosis, but the meaning of this association in the context of racialized residential segregation is not well understood. We investigated the effects of evenness and exposure residential segregation on persistent, distressing psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) in Black and White adolescents living in urban neighborhoods with high and low social cohesion in the United States. Data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study were used (N = 5871), measuring evenness and exposure segregation in metropolitan statistical areas using the Dissimilarity Index (DI) and Exposure-Interaction Index (EII), respectively. Multi-level log binomial generalized estimating equations estimated the relative risk of PLEs by exposure to each domain of segregation. Evenness and exposure segregation were associated with risk of PLE (DI: aRR = 1.11, 95 % CI 1.06-1.17; EII: aRR = 0.82, 95 % CI 0.78-0.87). When both domains were present in the same model, the effect of evenness, but not exposure, was attenuated (DI: aRR = 0.98, 95 % CI 0.92-1.05; EII: aRR = 0.81, 95 % 0.75-0.88). These associations were not statistically significantly different for levels of race (p-values ranged 0.08-0.86) or neighborhood social cohesion (p-values ranged 0.16-0.56). Sensitivity analysis indicated the main effect was not altered by duration of exposure. Lower exposure to exposure domain segregation may be protective against risk of PLEs in young adolescents in urban areas. The association was similar in comparisons of Black-White racial groups and high-low neighborhood social cohesion groups.

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Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are linked with risky sexual behaviors. However, we do not know how various ACE dimensions influence adolescent sexual behavior, especially behaviors that are precursors to early sexual intercourse. Using the data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study, we conducted LCA on 13 ACE measures assessed at ages 9-11 and analyzed how these latent classes relate to romantic relationships and early non-coital sexual behaviors (kissing and touching) at ages 11-12. We identified six distinct classes: Low ACEs (48.4%), Material Hardship and Community Violence (19.2%), Parental Dysfunction (18.6%), Parental Dysfunction and Criminal Justice Involvement (6.5%), Community and Peer Violence, Material Hardship, and Parental Dysfunction (6.4%), and Household Violence, Parental Dysfunction and Child Abuse (0.6%). The last three classes exhibited a higher likelihood of engaging in romantic and early non-coital sexual behaviors than adolescents in the Low ACEs class. The diverse impacts of ACE patterns suggest we should implement trauma-informed early sexuality education programs.

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Distinguishing those at risk of making a suicide attempt from those who experience only suicidal ideations remains a significant clinical challenge. Longitudinal studies during early adolescence may provide insight into altered brain and behavioral developmental trajectories among those who develop suicide behaviors (SB). Here, we applied linear mixed effects regression models to several global brain volumes and psychiatric/behavioral measures from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. We analyzed data from baseline up until the two-year follow-up, when participants were roughly 10 to 12 years of age. Individuals who had either ever endorsed or developed SB exhibited the greatest reductions in cortical gray brain matter volume. Those who developed SB exhibited the greatest increase in DSM5-depression scores and were the only group that maintained their levels of Behavioral Activation System (BAS) Fun-Seeking behaviors. Finally, we applied a Cross-Lagged Panel Modelling approach to the whole ABCD sample and found that baseline total cortical gray matter structure significantly predicted variation in BAS Fun-Seeking behaviors at the two-year follow-up, providing evidence supportive of a potential causal relationship between these two measures. Altogether, our findings suggest that differences in total cortical gray matter volume at 9-10 years of age may impact the development of behavioral approach systems. Altered development of behavioral approach systems and depressive symptoms distinguish youth who developed suicide behaviors during early adolescence.

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Background
Understanding attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication patterns is crucial for optimizing treatment outcomes. There are limited data on racial, ethnic, gender and socioeconomic treatment differences across longitudinal national samples.

Methods
Secondary data analysis of baseline through 3rd-year follow-up (2016–2020) data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD) (N = 11,875). Data were collected from 21 US sites, to reflect national demographic diversity. Complete case panel included 9708 children aged 9/10 at baseline and 12/13 at 3rd-year follow up. Sociodemographic factors (sex, race, ethnicity, household income), ADHD medication use (stimulants and non-stimulants), and ADHD severity were examined.

Results
By the 3rd-year follow-up, 13% of children used ADHD medications. Females were more likely to never have received medications compared to males (92% vs. 82%, odds ratio [OR] 2.34, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.05–2.67, p < 0.001). Females exhibited lower mean ADHD severity scores, though the difference diminished over time. Asian (95% vs. 87%, OR 2.83, 95% CI 1.41–5.38, p < 0.001) and Hispanic children (90% vs. 86%, OR 1.39, 95% CI 1.17–1.64, p < 0.001) were more likely to have never received medications compared to White and non-Hispanic children. Black children were more likely to discontinue medications (9% vs. 5%, OR 1.84, 95% CI 1.45–2.33, p < 0.001) compared to White children, although this was not significant after adjusting for sociodemographic factors. Children in lower income households were more likely to have clinically significant ADHD but less likely to receive and remain on medications compared to those from higher income households.

Conclusions
Significant differences exist in ADHD medication use patterns among US children based on sex, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Addressing these differences is essential to ensure equitable access to treatment.

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Childhood family income is a powerful predictor of academic achievement and mental health. Here, we ask whether children living in poverty who succeed academically are subsequently protected from, or at risk for, internalizing symptoms. Prior research indicates that children in poverty with better academic performance tend to have higher temporal coupling between the Lateral Frontoparietal Network (LFPN) and Default Mode Network (DMN) than lower-performing children in poverty. An open question is whether higher LFPN-DMN coupling has maladaptive long-term consequences for mental health for this population. In this pre-registered longitudinal study, we analyzed data from 10,829 children (1931 in poverty) in the ABCD study across four time points (ages 9-13). Higher grades correlated with fewer internalizing symptoms concurrently; this association was more pronounced for children below poverty. Longitudinally, higher LFPN-DMN related to more internalizing symptoms two years later for children in poverty in particular. Thus, although higher academic performance was associated with better mental health outcomes for all children, the specific pattern of LFPN-DMN connectivity that supports academic resilience among children in poverty may be a risk factor for developing internalizing symptoms. These findings highlight the complex nature of academic resilience in the context of structural inequity.

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To compare brain MRI outcomes between children who play American football vs non-contact sport controls testing the hypotheses that history (primary) and duration (secondary) of football participation would be associated with differences in cortical thickness, subcortical volume, resting state functional connectivity, and white matter diffusivity.

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Impaired musical rhythm abilities and developmental speech-language related disorders are biologically and clinically intertwined. Prior work examining their relationship has primarily used small samples; here, we studied associations at population-scale by conducting the largest systematic epidemiological investigation to date (total N = 39,358). Based on existing theoretical frameworks, we predicted that rhythm impairment would be a significant risk factor for speech-language disorders in the general adult population. Findings were consistent across multiple independent datasets and rhythm subskills (including beat synchronization and rhythm discrimination), and aggregate meta-analyzed data showed that non-linguistic rhythm impairment is a modest but consistent risk factor for developmental speech, language, and reading disorders (OR = 1.33 [1.18 – 1.49]; p < .0001). Further, cross-trait polygenic score analyses (total N = 7180) indicated shared genetic architecture between musical rhythm and reading abilities, suggesting genetic pleiotropy between musicality and language-related phenotypes.

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Many mental health problems are neurodevelopmental in nature and have an onset during childhood. These disorders are associated with neural abnormalities, but it is unclear when these emerge and how this relates to the development of different mental health problems.

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Reading ability depends on multiple cognitive skills, including decoding and language comprehension, which can vary widely across individuals-even among those with similarly low reading performance. To better understand the brain basis of this variability, we used connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) to identify large-scale functional connectivity patterns associated with reading and language skills in a population-based sample. Cross-sectional CPM models were trained using functional connectivity data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (n = 6894) and tested in two independent cohorts: the New Haven Lexinome Project and the Genes, Reading, and Dyslexia study (combined n = 136). Functional connectivity measures included both resting- and task-based scans. Reading and language were measured with psychometric tests of word reading and vocabulary, respectively. CPM models significantly predicted reading (r = .24) and language (r = .28) scores in the discovery sample and generalized to an external sample (rs = .23 and .19). Anatomically, the reading and language models showed significant overlap, with the medial frontal network emerging as most predictive in both. However, these models exhibited distinct generalization patterns to children with decoding versus language comprehension difficulties-classified using 20th percentile cutoffs-highlighting their neural specificity. Reading and language models included distinct connectivity signatures and generalized differently to children with decoding versus language comprehension difficulties. These findings demonstrate that although reading and language abilities are behaviorally related, they are supported by partially distinct neural architectures. Integrating behavioral and neuroimaging data may clarify specific brain-behavior relationships and inform more tailored interventions for children with reading and language difficulties.

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Pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use are common in adolescence, with research indicating that genetic and environmental factors account for variation in each of these behavioral and health outcomes. Moreover, pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use often co-occur during adolescence. However, research has not examined whether there is genetic and/or environmental covariation across these constructs in early adolescence or in diverse samples. To address these gaps, we examined genetic and environmental covariation in pain, sleep disturbances, and substance use intent in early adolescence.

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This study assesses the relation between screen time, problematic media use behaviors, and clinical concerns (internalizing and externalizing problems) and suicidal ideation and non-suicidal self-injury within race/ethnicity and sex in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (youth aged 11 to 12; = 10,052). Understanding behaviors around screens (problematic media use), rather than focusing on screen time alone is useful in guiding clinical recommendations. In this analysis, regression models indicated that problematic media use consistently predicted clinical concerns with a larger effect size than screen media use. When examining how problematic media use and screen media use related to clinical concerns along domains of race/ethnicity and sex, problematic media use was a more consistent predictor of clinical concerns than screen media use for almost every race/ethnicity (except American Indian/Alaska Native participants). Problematic media use was also a consistent predictor of clinical concerns for both males and females, with some difference in screen media use predictors. This study has implications for the utility of assessing screen media use in research on clinical concerns in youth, and further suggests that researchers and clinicians should consider behaviors around screens in addition to screen time itself when assessing for impact on mental health.

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Intrinsic brain dynamics play a fundamental role in cognitive function, but their development is incompletely understood. We investigated pubertal changes in temporal fluctuations of intrinsic network topologies (focusing on the strongest connections and coordination patterns) and signals, in an early longitudinal sample from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, with resting-state fMRI ( = 4,099 at baseline; = 3,376 at follow-up [median age = 10.0 (1.1) and 12.0 (1.1) years; = 2,116 with both assessments]). Reproducible, inverse associations between low-frequency signal and topological fluctuations were estimated ( < 0.05, = -0.20 to -0.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [-0.23, -0.001]). Signal (but not topological) fluctuations increased in somatomotor and prefrontal areas with pubertal stage ( < 0.03, = 0.06-0.07, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.11]), but decreased in orbitofrontal, insular, and cingulate cortices, as well as cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, and thalamus ( < 0.05, = -0.09 to -0.03, 95% CI = [-0.15, -0.001]). Higher temporal signal and topological variability in spatially distributed regions were estimated in girls. In racial/ethnic minorities, several associations between signal and topological fluctuations were in the opposite direction of those in the entire sample, suggesting potential racial differences. Our findings indicate that during puberty, intrinsic signal dynamics change significantly in developed and developing brain regions, but their strongest coordination patterns may already be sufficiently developed and remain temporally consistent.

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The intersecting roles of immigrant status and socioeconomic status (SES) have not been a focal area for research in adolescent sleep. This study examined sleep disparities among early adolescents from immigrant and nonimmigrant families and whether SES moderated sleep disparities by immigrant status.

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Background
Although perceived threats in a child’s social environment, including in the family, school, and neighborhood, are known to increase risk for adolescent psychopathology, the underlying biological mechanisms remain unclear. To investigate, we examined whether perceived social threats were associated with the functional connectivity of large-scale cortical networks in early adolescence, and whether such connectivity differences mediated the development of subsequent mental health problems in youth.

Methods
Structural equation models were used to analyze data from 8,690 youth (50% female, 45% non-White, age 9–10 years) drawn from the large-scale, nationwide Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study that has 21 clinical and research sites across the United States. Data were collected from 2016 to 2018.

Results
Consistent with Social Safety Theory, perceived social threats were prospectively associated with mental health problems both 6 months (standardized ) and 30 months () later. Perceived social threats predicted altered connectivity patterns within and between the default mode (DMN), dorsal attention (DAN), frontoparietal (FPN), and cingulo-opercular (CON) networks. In turn, hypoconnectivity within the DMN and FPN – and higher (i.e., less negative) connectivity between DMN-DAN, DMN-CON, and FPN-CON – mediated the association between perceived social threats and subsequent mental health problems.

Conclusions
Perceiving social threats in various environments may alter neural connectivity and increase the risk of psychopathology in youth. Therefore, parenting, educational, and community-based interventions that bolster social safety may be helpful.

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Externalizing behaviors in children, such as aggression, hyperactivity, and defiance, are influenced by complex interplays between genetic predispositions and environmental factors, particularly parental behaviors. Unraveling these intricate causal relationships can benefit from the use of robust data-driven methods.

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Psychological health issues resulting from emotional dysregulation such as anxiety and depression following pediatric concussion are a public health concern, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Puberty opens a window of vulnerability for emotion dysregulation and a link between pediatric concussion and hormonal deficits has been reported. We investigated the association between pubertal hormones and psychological health in children with and without concussion history.

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A key challenge in predicting a person’s state of mind is that there are a wide range of contributing factors that each have a subtle, yet significant, influence on mental health. We applied data mining techniques to identify the most important risk factors for predicting current symptoms and longitudinal outcomes from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Developmental study (n = 11,552). Our results consistently revealed that social conflicts were the strongest predictors of psychopathology, especially family fighting and reputational damage between peers. Sex-differences also emerged as a critical factor for predicting long-term mental health outcomes. Neuroimaging derived metrics were consistently the least informative. While these findings provide novel insight into the developmental origins of psychopathology, our best performing models could only explain up to 40% of the variation between individuals. Future research is needed to obtain a more complete understanding of all the factors that meaningfully contribute to mental health.

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Diagnostic criteria from the fifth edition of the does not fully address behavioral and clinical heterogeneity inherent to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); however, temperament-based profiles may help explain biological heterogeneity within the disorder. Temperament profiles have been defined and replicated among youths with ADHD and have demonstrated unique patterns of resting-state functional connectivity within a small sample. Two temperament profiles were identified by Kozlowski et al. in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, and in the present study, we sought to replicate and validate documented resting-state patterns. Functional connectivity between bilateral amygdalae and 12 Gordon networks was compared between profiles and typically developing (TD) youths. Surgent youths demonstrated stronger right amygdala-dorsal attention network connectivity (β = 0.0434) and right amygdala-retrosplenial temporal network connectivity (β = 0.0442) compared with TD youths. Irritable youths demonstrated unique connectivity patterns compared with TD and surgent youths; however, effects did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Findings provide support for future research examining temperament profiles among ADHD youths.

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Despite the evidence that sexual orientation can be fluid during early adolescence, there is a lack of research examining how sexual orientation self-identification evolves during this period. This study aims to explore age-specific patterns and trends in sexual orientation self-identification among a demographically diverse sample of U.S. adolescents.

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Identifying brain-based correlates of risk for future depression and anxiety severity in youth could improve prevention and treatment efforts. We tested whether connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) based on resting-state functional connectivity (FC) at baseline: (a) predicts future depression and anxiety severity during childhood and (b) generalizes to adolescence. We used two independent, longitudinal datasets including children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study and adolescents from the Boston Adolescent Neuroimaging of Depression and Anxiety (BANDA). ABCD included a cohort of 11,875 children ages 9-11 years old, and BANDA enrolled 215 adolescents ages 14-17 years, of which ~70% reported a depressive or anxiety disorder. CPM with internal (within ABCD) and external validation (from ABCD to BANDA) used baseline whole-brain FC to predict depression and anxiety severity at a 1-year follow-up assessment. ABCD-derived functional connections, which we term “Symptoms Network”, were validated within BANDA to test model applicability in adolescence, which is a peak period for the emergence of internalizing disorders. Participants with complete data were included from ABCD (n = 3,718, 52.9% girls, ages 10.0 ± 0.6) and BANDA (n = 150, 61.3% girls, ages 15.4 ± 0.9). In ABCD, we found that FC predicted 1-year follow-up symptoms severity ( = 0.058, = 0.040), measured with the Child Behavior Checklist Anxious/Depressed subscale. External validation in BANDA indicated that the Symptoms Network predicted 1-year follow-up symptoms severity ( = 0.222, = 0.007), measured with the Revised Child Depression and Anxiety Scale -transformed total score. In both ABCD and BANDA, FC enhanced the prediction of future symptom severity beyond baseline clinical and demographic information (baseline severity, sex, and age), including when correcting for mean head motion. The ABCD-derived connections included contributions from somatomotor, attentional, and subcortical regions and were characterized by heterogeneous FC within adolescents, where the same region pairs were characterized by positive FC for some participants but by negative FC for others. In conclusion, FC may provide inroads for early identification of internalizing symptoms, which could inform preventative-intervention approaches prior to the emergence of affective disorders during a critical period of neuromaturation. However, the small effect sizes and heterogeneity in results underscore the challenges of employing brain-based biomarkers for clinical applications and emphasize the need for individualized approaches for understanding neurodevelopment and mental health.

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ADHD can impair children’s functioning. Socioeconomic and sociodemographic factors present barriers to treatment access and lead to disparate outcomes in children with ADHD. The purpose of this study was to describe trajectories of functional outcomes and ADHD symptom counts across 3 years and explore the moderating effects of income and race/ethnicity on these trajectories among U.S. children with ADHD.

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To examine whether pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is associated with differences in neurocognitive functioning among children.

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Cognitive control refers to a set of mental processes that enable individuals to flexibly and adaptively engage in goal-directed behavior. Adolescence is characterized by the emergence and subsequent rapid development of adult-like cognitive control abilities, and as such, there is great interest in understanding the neural basis of this maturational process. The goal of the present study was to investigate how the resting-state and task-based functional connectivity (FC) patterns of two brain networks implicated in control processes, the fronto-parietal network (FPN) and the cingulo-opercular network (CON), contribute to individual differences in the cognitive control abilities of young adolescents. Specifically, we examined whether the FPN and the CON play distinct roles in the implementation of control as evidenced by unique associations with individual differences in cognitive control. We further investigated whether coordinated processing between the FPN and the CON supports the successful engagement of cognitive control. We explored these issues in a large sample (n = 3,719) of 9-10 year olds drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ Study. Our results provide evidence that youth with higher levels of cognitive control showed more isolation of the FPN from other networks, while the CON showed greater flexibility in its connectivity with other networks across rest and task. We additionally demonstrate that individuals with higher levels of cognitive control exhibit greater differentiation between the FPN and the CON. Together, these findings support developmental theories highlighting the importance of neural processing within and across the FPN and the CON during adolescence.

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Caffeine is the most commonly used substance during gaming sessions. Despite health guidelines to avoid caffeine before adulthood, many adolescents use caffeine to compensate for lost sleep or prolong wakefulness to enhance gaming performance. The relationship between gaming and sleep is well-established, but the role of caffeine has been under-explored. This study investigated the potential mediating effect of caffeine use on the relationship between gaming duration/problems and sleep duration/difficulties in young adolescents.

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To advance our understanding of sleep among sexual-minority (SM) youth using actigraphy and to assess sleep as a buffer against minority stress (i.e., discrimination) for SM youth.

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The current study examined how early smartphone ownership impacts parent-child informant discrepancy of youth internalizing problems during the transition to adolescence. We used four waves of longitudinal data (Years 1-4) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD; Baseline = 11,878; White = 52.0%, Hispanic = 20.3%, Black = 15.0%, Asian = 2.1%, Other = 10.5%; Female = 47.8%). Across the full sample, significant parent-child informant discrepancy, such that parents underestimated child reports, appeared at Year 2 ( = 12.0) and increased across the remainder of the study ( = -0.21, = .042, < .001, 95%CI [-.29, -.23]). Further, multi-group models indicated that significant parent-child informant discrepancy emerged in the years following initial smartphone acquisition, whereas youth who remained non smartphone owners did not demonstrate such a pattern. Moreover, this discrepancy grew with additional years of smartphone ownership. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on adolescent smartphone use and mental health by documenting a novel, longitudinally observed risk to timely parental detection of mental health problems by early smartphone ownership.

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A family history of depression is a well-documented risk factor for offspring psychopathology. However, the genetic mechanisms underlying the intergenerational transmission of depression remain unclear. We used genetic, family history, and diagnostic data from 11,875 9-10 year-old children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. We estimated and investigated the children’s polygenic scores (PGSs) for 30 distinct traits and their association with a family history of depression (including grandparents and parents) and the children’s overall psychopathology through logistic regression analyses. We assessed the role of polygenic risk for psychiatric disorders in mediating the transmission of depression from one generation to the next. Among 11,875 multi-ancestry children, 8111 participants had matching phenotypic and genotypic data (3832 female [47.2%]; mean (SD) age, 9.5 (0.5) years), including 6151 [71.4%] of European-ancestry). Greater PGSs for depression (estimate = 0.129, 95% CI = 0.070-0.187) and bipolar disorder (estimate = 0.109, 95% CI = 0.051-0.168) were significantly associated with higher family history of depression (Bonferroni-corrected P < 0.05). Depression PGS was the only PGS that significantly associated with both family risk and offspring’s psychopathology, and robustly mediated the impact of family history of depression on several youth psychopathologies including anxiety disorders, suicidal ideation, and any psychiatric disorder (proportions mediated 1.39-5.87% of the total effect on psychopathology; FDR-corrected P < 0.05). These findings suggest that increased polygenic risk for depression partially mediates the associations between family risk for depression and offspring psychopathology, showing a genetic basis for intergenerational transmission of depression. Future approaches that combine assessments of family risk with polygenic profiles may offer a more accurate method for identifying children at elevated risk.

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Increases in impulsivity and negative affect (e.g., neuroticism) are common during adolescence and are both associated with risk for alcohol-use initiation and other risk behaviors. Whole-brain functional connectivity approaches-when coupled with appropriate cross-validation-enable identification of complex neural networks subserving individual differences in dimensional traits (hereafter referred to as ‘neural signatures’). Here, we analyzed functional connectivity data acquired at age 19 from individuals enrolled in a multisite European study of adolescent development (N ~ 1100) using connectome-based predictive modeling. Network anatomies of these dimensional phenotypes were compared with one another and with a previously identified alcohol-use risk network to identify shared and unique neural mechanisms. Models accurately predicted both impulsivity and neuroticism (r’s ~ 0.17-0.19, p’s < 0.05), and successfully generalized to an external sample. The impulsivity network was predominantly characterized by motor/sensory-related connections. By contrast, the neural signature of neuroticism was relatively more distributed across multiple canonical networks, including motor/sensory, default mode, subcortical, frontoparietal and cerebellar networks. Very few connections were common to both impulsivity and neuroticism networks. Moreover, while ~10-20% of the connections from each trait overlapped with the alcohol-use risk network, these connections were distinct between the two traits. This study for the first time identifies functional connectivity signatures of two common risk factors for alcohol-use in youth-impulsivity and neuroticism. Consistent with current equifinality-based conceptions of development, few connections predicted both impulsivity and neuroticism, indicating that the neural signatures of these two traits are relatively distinct despite both being implicated in alcohol-use risk and a wide array of behaviors.

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Previous studies have demonstrated that children with high irritability are at increased risk for suicidal ideations and behaviors. However, they have mostly relied on teacher reports and shown mixed findings regarding sex differences. We aimed to identify developmental trajectories of childhood irritability, test their direct and indirect (through psychopathology) associations with adolescent suicidal ideations and behaviors, and examine whether these associations differed by sex.

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Functional network connectivity (FNC) among large-scale brain networks-including the default mode (DMN), frontoparietal (FPN), and salience (SN) networks-have been increasingly implicated in transdiagnostic features of mental health disorders. In this study, we examined FNC patterns among the DMN, FPN, SN, and nine additional large-scale networks using resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) data from 7760 adolescents (ages 10-13) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We investigated whether altered connectivity among these networks was associated with symptoms of social anxiety, as reported by caregivers at the two-year follow-up visit. Bayesian multiple regression revealed small, positive associations between social anxiety symptoms and FNC between the SN and cingulo-opercular network (β = 0.038, 95 % HDI = [0.003, 0.073]), the SN and retrosplenial temporal network (β = 0.031, 95 % HDI = [0.001, 0.061]), and the DMN and dorsal attention network (β = 0.046, 95 % HDI = [0.008, 0.085]). Female sex was also associated with greater social anxiety (β = 0.073, 95 % HDI = [0.026, 0.119]). These results highlight specific patterns of FNC that may serve as early neurobiological markers of social anxiety during adolescent development, offering insight into the network-level mechanisms that underlie risk for social anxiety in youth. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT: By analyzing resting-state fMRI data from 7760 adolescents, we identified small, positive effects of salience network-cingulo-opercular network and salience network-retrosplenial temporal network connectivity on social anxiety, and a small, positive effect of default mode network-dorsal attention network connectivity. These findings highlight the role of salience and default mode network dynamics in shaping adolescent social anxiety risk. With growing interest in transdiagnostic approaches to mental health, our results provide novel evidence that network-level variations can represent a core risk factor for social anxiety during early adolescence. This work suggests that functional network connectivity could yield clinically relevant biomarkers for early identification and targeted interventions for social anxiety in adolescence.

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During puberty, sex-specific processes shape distinct mental health outcomes. However, research on puberty and psychosis has been limited, and the findings are conflicting.

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To examine associations between low cognitive-performance and regional-and network-level brain changes at ages 9-10 in very-preterm, moderately-preterm, and full-term children, and explore whether these alterations predict ASD/ADHD symptoms at age 12.

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Adolescent neuroimaging studies of sex differences in the human brain predominantly examine average differences between males and females. This focus on mean differences without probing relative distributions and similarities may contribute to both conflation and overestimation of sex differences and sexual dimorphism in the developing human brain. We aimed to characterize the variance in brain macro- and micro-structure in early adolescence as it pertains to sex at birth using a large sample of 9-11-year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 7,723). For global and regional estimates of gray and white matter volume, cortical thickness, and white matter microstructure (i.e., fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity), we examined: within- and between-sex variance, overlap between male and female distributions, inhomogeneity of variance, effect size, and CLES. We examined these sex differences using both unadjusted (raw) brain estimates and residualized brain estimates from mixed-effects modeling (adjusted) to account for variance better attributed to age, pubertal development, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, MRI scanner manufacturer, and total brain volume, where applicable. Contrary to the popular view of the brain as sexually dimorphic, we found high similarity and low difference between sexes in all regional measurements of brain structure examined after accounting for other sources of variance. However, the sex difference for adjusted total brain volume (TBV) had a medium effect size and a 71.9% probability that a randomly chosen male adolescent would have a larger brain than a randomly chosen female adolescent. All cortical and subcortical volumes showed significant inhomogeneity of variance between sexes, whereas a minority of brain regions showed significant sex differences in variance for cortical thickness, white matter volume, fractional anisotropy, and mean diffusivity. Previously reported sex differences in early adolescent regional human brain volume may, therefore, be driven by disparities in variance, rather than binary, sex-based phenotypes. This study builds upon previous findings illustrating the importance of considering variance when examining sex differences in brain structure.

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Sleep problems are common in adolescence and are associated with poorer mental and physical health. Parental factors may be associated with adolescent sleep, providing potential targets for sleep health interventions. Whether these associations are mediated through emotional regulation and screen use and whether they vary by adolescent sex remain unclear.

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Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common and account for more than 25% of psychiatric disorders in youths, but the underlying neurobiological mechanisms associated with risk and resilience among children exposed to ACEs are poorly understood.

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Neighborhood adversity links to mental health and cognitive outcomes, but little is known about structural factors that may buffer these links. The current study addresses this gap by assessing the role of protective factors in the association of neighborhood deprivation, threat, and segregation with psychopathology symptoms and cognitive outcomes. Linear mixed models were run in ABCD sample participants (n = 5812) to test associations of neighborhood Area Deprivation Index (ADI; deprivation), crime (threat), and dissimilarity and interaction index (segregation) with attention difficulties, internalizing and externalizing symptoms, psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), and fluid and crystallized cognitive performance. School environment, neighborhood education child opportunity index, neighborhood cohesion, and green space were tested as moderators of the association of neighborhood adversity with outcomes. Higher neighborhood educational resources buffered the association of neighborhood deprivation with crystallized cognitive performance. The association of higher neighborhood crime with externalizing symptoms was weaker for youth in less supportive school environments. Further, higher neighborhood segregation was associated with internalizing symptoms more strongly for youth with more neighborhood educational resources. Taken together, results suggest adverse neighborhood environments are associated with higher psychopathology symptoms and lower cognitive performance. Access of neighborhood educational resources could buffer links of neighborhood deprivation and cognitive performance. While evidence of protective links was not widespread, studying these patterns is necessary for understanding possible environmental contributors to mental health and cognitive function. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpGkdPkPiSw. SUMMARY: Adverse neighborhood environments were associated with higher psychopathology symptoms and lower cognitive performance, independent of individual socioeconomic status. Higher neighborhood educational resources buffered links of neighborhood deprivation with crystallized cognitive performance; deprivation was more strongly associated with lower crystallized cognition for youth with lower neighborhood educational resources. While evidence of protective links was not widespread, understanding these patterns is necessary for informing structural prevention and intervention targets for mental health and cognition.

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Sports participation benefits children but increases the risk of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and orthopedic injury (OI). This study examines risks of mTBI vs. OI associated with specific sports and benefits of sports participation.

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Socioeconomic determinants of health impact childhood development and adult health outcomes. One key aspect is the physical environment and neighborhood where children live and grow. Emerging evidence suggests that neighborhood deprivation, often measured by the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), may influence neurodevelopment, but longitudinal and multimodal neuroimaging analyses remain limited.

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Prodromal symptoms of mania in children are predictive of the later development of bipolar disorder; yet, the neurostructural correlates of these early symptoms remain poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the association between prodromal mania symptoms and brain structure in a large cohort of children.

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This study tested whether measurement of the Familism scale of the Mexican American Cultural Values Scale (comprising Support, Obligations, and Referent subscales) was invariant across parent and youth reporters in early adolescence and examined whether reporter discrepancies predicted youth functioning across substance use, problem behavior, academic, peer, and family domains 1 year later. The sample comprised 2410 multi-ethnic Hispanic/Latino/a youth (M = 12.87 years; 48% female) and their parents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. At least partial metric invariance was established for Support and Obligations subscales, suggesting associations between mean levels of these subscales with other measures can be meaningfully compared by parent and youth reporters. However, the Referent subscale and Total Familism scale demonstrated only configural invariance, meaning their structure was similar across reporters, but item loadings, latent means, and associations with other measures were not comparable. Reporter discrepancies in Support and Obligations did not account for unique variance in any indicator of youth functioning beyond the main effects of parent and youth Support and Obligations, both of which were associated with adaptive youth outcomes. Both parent and youth reports on the Familism scale of the Mexican American Cultural Values Scale have demonstrated reliability and validity in previous work, but our tests of measurement invariance suggest only the Support and Obligations subscales, but not the Referent or Familism scales, can be meaningfully compared across parent and youth reporters. This work has important implications for the assessment of familism in early adolescence and its role for youth well-being.

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Disadvantaged socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with elevated internalizing symptoms in adolescents and is potentially mediated by accelerated pubertal development. Neighborhood SES may have distinct effects beyond family influences, interacting with family SES to shape adolescents’ development. The present study examines the combined effects of family and neighborhood SES on pubertal development trajectory and internalizing symptoms and explores the mediating role of pubertal trajectory. This study included 5560 early adolescents (46.51% female; aged 9-10 years at baseline; M = 9.48; SD = 0.51) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study across four annual assessments. Three pubertal development trajectories were identified: “early-onset with slow progression”, “late-onset with rapid catch-up”, and “late-onset with slow catch-up”. The results revealed that accelerated pubertal trajectories mediated the association between multilevel SES disparities and internalizing symptoms. For adolescents from high-SES families, high neighborhood SES reduced the likelihood of early-onset and rapid catch-up trajectories, which were linked to fewer internalizing symptoms. However, for adolescents from low-SES families, higher neighborhood SES increased the likelihood of early-onset and rapid catch-up trajectories, which were associated with more internalizing symptoms. Sex differences were observed, with neighborhood SES predicting pubertal trajectories in males but not in females, and the rapid catch-up trajectory was associated with fewer anxious/depressed symptoms in males but more internalizing symptoms in females. This study emphasizes the crucial role of family and neighborhood SES disparities in shaping adolescent pubertal development, which in turn affects internalizing symptoms.

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Internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety and depression) are associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes. While some predictors of internalizing problems are known (e.g., their frequent co-occurrence with neurodevelopmental (ND) conditions), the biological markers of internalizing problems are not well understood. Here, we used deep learning, a powerful tool for identifying complex and multi-dimensional brain-behaviour relationships, to predict cross-sectional and worsening longitudinal trajectories of internalizing problems. Data were extracted from four large-scale datasets: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the Healthy Brain Network, the Human Connectome Project Development study, and the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental network. We developed deep learning models that used measures of brain structure (thickness, surface area, and volume) to (a) predict clinically significant internalizing problems cross-sectionally (N = 14,523); and (b) predict subsequent worsening trajectories (using the reliable change index) of internalizing problems (N = 10,540) longitudinally. A stratified cross-validation scheme was used to tune, train, and test the models, which were evaluated using the area under the receiving operating characteristic curve (AUC). The cross-sectional model performed well across the sample, reaching an AUC of 0.80 [95% CI: 0.71, 0.88]. For the longitudinal model, while performance was sub-optimal for predicting worsening trajectories in a sample of the general population (AUC = 0.66 [0.65, 0.67]), good performance was achieved in a small, external test set of primarily ND conditions (AUC = 0.80 [0.78, 0.81]), as well as across all ND conditions (AUC = 0.73 [0.70, 0.76]). Deep learning with features of brain structure is a promising avenue for biomarkers of internalizing problems, particularly for individuals who have a higher likelihood of experiencing difficulties.

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Low socio-economic status, male sex, and body mass index (BMI) are known risk factors for high sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption in adolescents. The present analysis aimed to predict SSB intake based on known risk factors and resting-state functional magnetic resonance (rsfMRI) connectivity from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study.

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Research has linked early intercourse and romantic relationships to increased depressive symptoms, especially for female adolescents. However, less is known about the ways in which early noncoital sexual behaviors are associated with mental health. Thus, this study examined whether early kissing, sexual touching, and romantic relationships were associated with depressive symptoms, and whether these associations differed for male, female, and nonbinary adolescents.

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Perceived racial discrimination during childhood and adolescence is a critical social determinant of health disparities. However, few scales measure perceived racial discrimination in these age groups, and even fewer are validated with robust psychometric properties or demonstrate measurement invariance across racial and ethnic or sex groups.

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Youth whose parents have depression histories are at elevated risk for psychopathology. Familial depression-related patterns of neurodevelopment and environmental stress (e.g., family conflict) likely contribute to heightened risk. However, knowledge remains limited due to few studies, small sample sizes, and cross-sectional designs. We sought to identify how neural circuitry, familial risk for depression, and family conflict interact during preadolescence to predict adolescent psychopathology.

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The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® has significant potential to reveal the nature, causes, context, and consequences of pubertal development in diverse American youth. Optimal use of the data requires thoughtful consideration of puberty: how it is likely to affect psychological and neural development, and its measurement. We examined how ABCD puberty data have been used, and the relative advantages of two measures derived from the Pubertal Development Scale: the categorical measure provided in data releases and a continuous measure widely used outside ABCD.

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Perinatal insults (e.g., obstetric complications, substance exposure) are increasing in prevalence and confer risk for psychotic-like experiences in offspring, contributing to a growing public health burden. Perinatal insults often co-occur, creating methodological challenges in understanding their impacts on psychosis-spectrum phenotypes. Data-driven approaches to organizing perinatal insults and testing their longitudinal effects on psychotic-like experiences in youth increases ecological validity and translational utility. Using data from 11,417 youth ages 9-14 across five years of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, data-driven dimensions of perinatal insults were derived through exploratory factor analysis of thirty-one perinatal insults. Latent growth modeling tested the effect of perinatal insult dimensions on trajectories (baseline, rate-of-change, year-four severity) of distressing psychotic-like experiences. Six dimensions of perinatal insults were observed (substance exposure, obstetric complications, birth complications, postnatal challenges, parental age, medical needs). Substance exposure (β = 0.42, 95% CI [0.20, 0.63]), obstetric complications (β = 0.34, 95% CI [0.08, 0.61]), and parental age (β = 1.00, 95% CI [0.76, 1.22]) were associated with elevated baseline psychotic-like experiences. Perinatal insult dimensions were not associated with increasing rates-of-change in psychotic-like experiences. Medical needs (β = -0.12, 95% CI [-0.20, -0.05]) and parental age (β = -0.11, 95% CI [-0.18, -0.03]) were associated with steeper declines in psychotic-like experiences. Perinatal insult dimensions remained associated with elevated psychotic-like experiences at year-four. Data-driven dimensions of perinatal insults are associated with stably elevated psychotic-like experience trajectories across early adolescence. Given the role of psychotic-like experiences in later psychopathology and functioning, early identification of at-risk offspring is critical in reducing the public health burden of these exposures.

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Females who experience menarche early have elevated risk for dysmenorrhea; yet, other puberty features precede menarche. Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study®, pubertal timing was estimated via random effects linear growth curves of pubertal status indicators excluding menarche for postmenarcheal females with no ( = 1083), mild ( = 1239), or severe ( = 266) dysmenorrhea. Early pubertal timing increased odds for dysmenorrhea by 22-31%, making it a novel marker for dysmenorrhea risk.

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Not everyone is equally likely to experience mental illness. What is the contribution of an individual’s genetic background and experiences of childhood adversity to that likelihood? And how do these risk factors interact at the level of the brain? This study explores these questions by investigating the relationship between genetic liability for mental illness, childhood adversity, and cortico-limbic connectivity in a large developmental sample drawn from the ABCD cohort (N = 6535). Canonical Correlation Analysis – a multivariate data-reduction technique – revealed two genetic dimensions of mental illness from the polygenic risk scores for ADHD, Anxiety, Depression, and Psychosis. The first dimension represented liability for broad psychopathology which was positively correlated with adversity. The second dimension represented neurodevelopmental-specific risk which negatively interacted with adversity, suggesting that neurodevelopmental symptoms may arise from unique combinations of genetic and environmental factors that differ from other symptom domains. Next, we investigated the cortico-limbic signature of adversity and genetic liability using Partial Least Squares. We found that the neural correlates of adversity broadly mirrored those of genetic liability, with adversity capturing most of the shared variance. These novel findings suggest that genetic and environmental risk overlap in the neural connections that underlie mental health symptomatology.

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In longitudinal research with adolescents and adults, one-third of individuals who report self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs) fail to report this history in the future. However, there is limited information regarding this phenomenon in children. This study examined the prevalence, correlates, and developmental shifts of inconsistent reporting of SITBs in children using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study baseline (BL, ages 9-10), Year 1 (Y1), and Year 2 (Y2) assessments. Lifetime SITBs were assessed annually using a computerized clinical interview. Reporting consistency was calculated for 1-year intervals in two partially overlapping cohorts (BL-Y1, = 1,350; Y1-Y2, = 1,086). Logistic regressions modeled BL sociodemographic, clinical, and neurocognitive correlates with inconsistent reporting from BL to Y1. Developmental differences in inconsistency were assessed by comparing rates between BL-Y1 and Y1-Y2. At Y1, 67% of SITB reporters from BL did not endorse past SITBs (inconsistency range = 67%-80% across SITBs). Less severe clinical symptoms (e.g., parent-reported youth psychopathology, longitudinal SITB reports), younger age, and lower general neurocognitive performance were significantly associated with higher odds of inconsistent reporting of SITBs. Inconsistency in nonsuicidal self-injury reporting was significantly lower from Y1 to Y2 (73%) compared to BL-Y1 (80%). In late childhood, inconsistency in reported SITBs is the norm and may hinder accurate risk assessment for youth. These patterns may be associated with lower clinical severity and neurocognitive and developmental immaturity. Further examination is needed to better understand features associated with inconsistent reporting (e.g., forgetting, reconceptualizing, or nondisclosure) to inform suicide risk assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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Adolescence marks a critical window wherein individual differences in brain structure may influence the emergence of alcohol use behaviors. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a region involved in reward processing and behavioral regulation, may play a key role in shaping early responses to alcohol. This study examined whether smaller OFC volume at ages 9-10 predicted likelihood of experiencing subjective effects of alcohol by ages 13-14. Participants (N = 206; 57 % female) were drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Baseline medial and lateral OFC volumes were used. Subjective response to alcohol was measured during follow-up using a binary outcome (1 = any effect, 0 = no effects). Mixed-effects logistic regression models tested the association between OFC and alcohol response, adjusting for sex, parental education, race/ethnicity, intracranial volume, and site. Smaller left medial OFC at Baseline was significantly associated with greater odds of reporting subjective effects (OR = 1.70, p = .026). Youth who reported subjective effects also consumed more alcohol in the past year (p < .001), but did not differ in their alcohol expectancies. Among those reporting subjective effects, OFC volume was not significantly associated with the amount or frequency of alcohol use. These findings suggest that smaller OFC volume may not reflect pharmacological sensitivity per se, but instead relate to early drinking behavior sufficient to elicit noticeable effects. This may reflect underlying impulsivity-related traits or altered neurodevelopmental trajectories that predispose youth to early and potentially riskier patterns of alcohol use. Results underscore the potential value of identifying structural brain markers that contribute to individual vulnerability for alcohol use during adolescence.

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Racial discrimination has been linked with pubertal development among Black and Latinx American youth. The direction of effects, however, is poorly understood. We examined bidirectional associations between exposure to racial discrimination and pubertal development among Black and Latinx boys and girls from age 9 to age 11.

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Major Depression (MD) is a prevalent, disabling and life-limiting condition. The neurobiological associations of genetic risk for MD remain under-explored in large samples, with no comprehensive mega-analysis conducted to date. Our study analysed data from 11 separate studies, encompassing 50,975 participants from the ENIGMA Major Depressive Disorder Working Group. We developed highly consistent genetic and neuroimaging protocols and applied these throughout all participating studies, together with rigorous genetic methods to remove overlap between the polygenic risk scores (PRS) training and testing samples. Elevated PRS for MD correlated with lower intracranial volume and lower global measure of cortical surface area (β = -0.017, p = 1.97 × 10; β = -0.013, p = 4.5 × 10; pFDR < 3.62 × 10). The most significant cortical association was observed in the surface area of the frontal lobe (β = -0.011, p = 2.85 × 10, pFDR = 1.42 × 10), particularly in the left medial orbito-frontal gyrus (β = -0.021, p = 9.48 × 10, pFDR = 1.25 × 10). In subcortical regions, lower volumes of the thalamus, hippocampus, and pallidum correlated with higher PRS of MD (β ranged from -0.011 to -0.015, p ranged from 0.002-1.73 × 10, pFDR < 0.006). In a subsample of young individuals only (<25 years old, N = 5570), although there were no FDR-significant findings, directions of effects were highly consistent between the analyses of cortical surface areas in youth and the full sample (71.2% in the same direction, exact binomial test p-value = 7.56 × 10). Subsequent Mendelian randomisation analysis revealed potentially causal effects of smaller left hippocampal volume on higher liability for MD (Inverse variance weighted analysis β = -0.064, p = 8.04 × 10, pFDR = 0.04). Our findings represent an example of how extensive international collaborations can significantly advance our neurogenetic understanding of MD and give insights to avenues for early interventions in those at high risk for developing MD.

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