Research Publications

Abstract

Although a relatively large body of research has identified multiple factors associated with adolescent substance use, less is known about earlier substance-related factors during preadolescence, including curiosity to use substances. The present study examined individual-, peer-, and parent-level domains pertaining to substance use and how these domains vary by sociodemographic subgroups and substance type.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Perceived threat in youth’s environments can elevate risk for mental health, social, and neurocognitive difficulties throughout the lifespan. However, few studies examine variability in youth’s perceptions of threat across multiple contexts or evaluate outcomes across multiple domains, ultimately limiting our understanding of specific risks associated with perceived threats in different contexts. This study examined associations between perceived threat in youth’s neighborhood, school, and family contexts at ages 9-10 and mental health, social, and neurocognitive outcomes at ages 11-12 within a large US cohort ( = 5525) enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®). Latent profile analysis revealed four distinct profiles: Low Threat in all contexts, Elevated Family Threat, Elevated Neighborhood Threat, and Elevated Threat in all contexts. Mixed-effect models and post hoc pairwise comparisons showed that youth in Elevated Threat profile had poorer mental health and social outcomes 2 years later. Youth in the Elevated Family Threat profile uniquely showed increased disruptive behavior symptoms, whereas youth in the Elevated Neighborhood Threat profile predominantly displayed increased sleep problems and worse neurocognitive outcomes 2 years later. Together, findings highlight the importance of considering perceptions of threat across multiple contexts to achieve a more nuanced developmental picture.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Pediatric obesity is a growing public health concern. Previous work has observed diet to impact nucleus accumbens (NAcc) inflammation in rodents, measured by the reactive proliferation of glial cells. Recent work in humans has demonstrated a relationship between NAcc cell density-a proxy for neuroinflammation-and weight gain in youth; however, the directionality of this relationship in the developing brain and association with diet remains unknown.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Adolescence is the peak period for the emergence of substance use, which can lead to long-term psychosocial, occupational and interpersonal complications. Ongoing large-scale, longitudinal, consortium initiatives, such as the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, offer unprecedented opportunities to elucidate key risk factors for problematic substance use in a well-powered sample and to examine how changes in risk factors relate to symptoms across time. Delay discounting has been proposed as a putative risk marker for early substance-use initiation and other forms of psychopathology. However, the extent to which other factors (e.g., socio-economic status and cognitive ability) influence discounting behaviour in young adolescents is not well established. The present study leverages data from the ABCD study (n = 11 045) to assess associations between core demographic and familial variables and delay discounting in youth-operationalized using hyperbolic discounting rates (k)-before the onset of significant psychopathology. Model estimates revealed significant effects of individual difference factors (e.g., sex and socio-economic status) and alcohol risk status (based on family history) on delay discounting. No significant differences were observed in the primary sample when comparing the presence of parent drug problems or prenatal drug exposures. These effects will require replication in later waves of ABCD. Nonetheless, these results provide support for delay discounting as a potential risk marker for problematic alcohol use and demonstrate a relationship between key demographic variables and adolescent discounting behaviour. Further, these results provide an empirical baseline from which developmental trajectories of delay discounting and substance use may be tracked throughout future waves of ABCD.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Trait stability of measures is an essential requirement for individual differences research. Functional MRI has been increasingly used in studies that rely on the assumption of trait stability, such as attempts to relate task related brain activation to individual differences in behavior and psychopathology. However, recent research using adult samples has questioned the trait stability of task-fMRI measures, as assessed by test-retest correlations. To date, little is known about trait stability of task fMRI in children. Here, we examined within-session reliability and long-term stability of individual differences in task-fMRI measures using fMRI measures of brain activation provided by the adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD) Study Release v4.0 as an individual’s average regional activity, using its tasks focused on reward processing, response inhibition, and working memory. We also evaluated the effects of factors potentially affecting reliability and stability. Reliability and stability (quantified as the ratio of non-scanner related stable variance to all variances) was poor in virtually all brain regions, with an average value of 0.088 and 0.072 for short term (within-session) reliability and long-term (between-session) stability, respectively, in regions of interest (ROIs) historically-recruited by the tasks. Only one reliability or stability value in ROIs exceeded the ‘poor’ cut-off of 0.4, and in fact rarely exceeded 0.2 (only 4.9%). Motion had a pronounced effect on estimated reliability/stability, with the lowest motion quartile of participants having a mean reliability/stability 2.5 times higher (albeit still ‘poor’) than the highest motion quartile. Poor reliability and stability of task-fMRI, particularly in children, diminishes potential utility of fMRI data due to a drastic reduction of effect sizes and, consequently, statistical power for the detection of brain-behavior associations. This essential issue urgently needs to be addressed through optimization of task design, scanning parameters, data acquisition protocols, preprocessing pipelines, and data denoising methods.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Prenatal selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) exposure has been inconsistently linked to depression, and little is known about neural correlates. We examined whether prenatal SSRI exposure is associated with depressive symptoms and brain structure during middle childhood.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Previous research investigated the cerebral volumetric correlates of impulsivity largely in moderate-sized samples and few have examined the distinct correlates of dimensions of impulsivity, sex differences, or heritability of the correlates. Here, we performed voxel-based morphometry analysis of data (n = 11,474; 5,452 girls, 9-10 years) curated from the Adolescent Brain Cognition Development project. In a linear regression with all five UPPS-P subscores as regressors and age in months, total intracranial volume, study site, and scanner model as covariates, higher levels of lack of premeditation, and sensation seeking were correlated with larger cortical and subcortical gray matter volumes (GMVs). In contrast, higher positive urgency was correlated with smaller GMVs in many of the same regions. The dimensional impulsivity traits also involved distinct volumetric correlates, with, for instance, sensation seeking and positive urgency specifically implicating bilateral caudate head/mid-cingulate cortex and bilateral lateral orbitofrontal cortex/left precentral gyrus, respectively. Boys relative to girls scored higher in all impulsivity dimensions. Girls relative to boys showed significantly stronger positive and negative correlations between sensation seeking and insula, putamen, and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) GMVs and between positive urgency and cingulate cortex, insula, and IFG GMVs, respectively. With a subsample of twins, the dimensional impulsivity traits were weakly to moderately heritable in both girls and boys, and the GMV correlates were highly heritable in girls and boys combined. These findings collectively suggest shared and nonshared as well as sex differences in the cerebral volumetric bases of dimensional impulsivity traits and may facilitate research of externalizing psychopathology in children.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Longitudinal studies provide a more precise measure of brain development over time, as they focus on within subject variability, as opposed to cross-sectional studies. This is especially important in children, where rapid brain development occurs, and inter-subject variability can be large. Tracking healthy brain development and identifying markers of typical development are also critically important to diagnose mental disorders at early ages.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Conduct disorder (CD) is a common syndrome with far-reaching effects. Risk factors for the development of CD span social, psychological, and biological domains. Researchers note that predictive models of CD are limited if the focus is on a single risk factor or even a single domain. Machine learning methods are optimized for the extraction of trends across multidomain data but have yet to be implemented in predicting the development of CD.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Increasing legalization of cannabis, in addition to longstanding rates of tobacco use, raises concerns for possible cognitive decrements from secondhand smoke or environmental exposure, although little research exists. We investigate the relation between cognition and secondhand and environmental cannabis and tobacco exposure in youth.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Binge eating disorder (BED) is a pernicious psychiatric disorder which is linked with an array of multisystemic organ morbidity, broad psychiatric morbidity, and obesity. Despite behavioral markers often developing in early childhood, the neurobiological markers of early-onset BED remain understudied, and developmental pathophysiology remains poorly understood.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Children in poverty must contend with systems that do not meet their needs. We explored what, at a neural level, helps explain children’s resilience in these contexts. Lower coupling between lateral frontoparietal network (LFPN) and default mode network (DMN)-linked, respectively, to externally- and internally-directed thought-has previously been associated with better cognitive performance. However, we recently found the opposite pattern for children in poverty. Here, we probed ecologically-valid assessments of performance. In a pre-registered study, we investigated trajectories of network coupling over ages 9-13 and their relation to school grades and attention problems. We analyzed longitudinal data from ABCD Study (N = 8366 children at baseline; 1303 below poverty). The link between cognitive performance and grades was weaker for children in poverty, highlighting the importance of ecologically-valid measures. As predicted, higher LFPN-DMN connectivity was linked to worse grades and attentional problems for children living above poverty, while children below poverty showed opposite tendencies. This interaction between LFPN-DMN connectivity and poverty related to children’s grades two years later; however, it was attenuated when controlling for baseline grades and was not related to attention longitudinally. Together, these findings suggest network connectivity is differentially related to performance in real-world settings for children above and below poverty.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

To describe the agreement between parent- and adolescent- reports of adolescent moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) and to determine sociodemographic factors associated with MVPA reporting differences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant social disruptions for youth caused by lockdowns, school closures, and a lack of in-person social interactions. Companion animals are prevalent in US households and may provide a source of emotional support and motivation for youth to engage in adaptive coping behaviors during social challenges. The goals of this study were to assess if dog owners, non-dog pet owners, and non-pet owners differed in stress levels, positive affect, and use of adaptive coping strategies such as increased time outdoors, regular walking, and healthy behaviors. This study used data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large, nationally representative dataset of American youth. In a cross-sectional sample of 6,069 adolescents, there were significant, but small, relationships between owning a non-dog pet and lower levels of positive affect, and both dog owners and non-dog pet owners reported higher perceived stress compared with non-pet owners. Dog ownership was associated with higher odds of using healthy coping strategies compared with non-pet owners, but this relationship was not significant when controlling for demographic variables. Dog owners reported higher odds of having a walking routine and spending time outdoors compared with non-pet owners. Overall, the results suggest no buffering effect of pet ownership on youth mental wellbeing, but dog ownership is associated with some healthy coping behaviors linked to walking.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Psychostimulants are frequently used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but side effects are common leading to many patients discontinuing treatment. Identifying neural mechanisms by which psychostimulants attenuate symptoms may guide the development of more refined and tolerable therapeutics.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with larger COVID-19 disease burdens and pandemic-related economic impacts. We utilized the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to understand how family- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage relate to disease burden, family communication, and preventative responses to the pandemic in over 6,000 youth-caregiver dyads. Data were collected at three timepoints (May-August 2020). Here, we show that both family- and neighborhood-level disadvantage were associated with caregivers’ reports of greater family COVID-19 disease burden, less perceived exposure risk, more frequent caregiver-youth conversations about COVID-19 risk/prevention and reassurance, and greater youth preventative behaviors. Families with more socioeconomic disadvantage may be adaptively incorporating more protective strategies to reduce emotional distress and likelihood of COVID-19 infection. The results highlight the importance of caregiver-youth communication and disease-preventative practices for buffering the economic and disease burdens of COVID-19, along with policies and programs that reduce these burdens for families with socioeconomic disadvantage.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The current cross-sectional study aimed to extend the literature on childhood adversity by examining the unique associations between potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and a range of mental health concerns, including domain-specific versus comorbid concerns. Participants were 11,877 preadolescents (47.8% female, 15.0% Black, 20.3% Hispanic/Latinx, M  = 9.5 years) taking part in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study . The Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia was used to measure PTEs and caregiver- and child-reported mental health concerns. Adjusted odds ratios (aORs) were used for the outcomes of interest. Overall, PTEs were consistently associated with increased odds of experiencing comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), internalizing disorders, and externalizing disorders, significant AORs = 1.34-4.30, after accounting for children’s experiences of other PTEs and polyvictimization. In contrast, PTEs were generally not associated with meeting the criteria for diagnoses within only one domain (i.e., internalizing-only or externalizing-only diagnoses). We also found PTEs to be differentially related to the various mental health outcomes. In particular, witnessing domestic violence was consistently associated with children’s psychopathology. Other PTEs, such as witnessing community violence, were not associated with children’s psychopathology in the final model. Associations between PTEs and mental health concerns did not differ as a function of sex. Overall, the results support the notion that PTEs are associated with comorbid concerns rather than individual disorders. These findings have important implications for the screening of PTEs, continued research on the conceptualization of traumatic stress, and the importance of accounting for comorbidities across mental health domains.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Emotion regulation is essential for successful social interactions and function, which are important aspects of middle childhood. The current study is one of the first to examine associations between neural correlates of implicit emotion regulation and indices of social behavior and experience during late middle childhood. We examined neural activation during the implicit emotion regulation condition of the Emotional N-back task using data from 8987 9- to 11-year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. The brain regions assessed included areas linked to social cognition, social behavior, and emotion recognition, including the amygdala, insula, middle temporal gyrus, and inferior parietal lobe. Greater number of close friends was associated with significantly higher activation of the fusiform gyrus, insula, temporoparietal junction, inferior parietal lobe, and superior temporal gyrus during implicit emotion regulation. Greater reciprocal social impairments were linked to decreased fusiform gyrus activation during implicit emotion regulation. More experiences of discrimination were associated with a significantly lower activation in the middle temporal gyrus during implicit emotion regulation. This study provides evidence that both positive and negative indices of children’s social experiences and behaviors are associated with neural correlates of implicit emotion regulation during late middle childhood. These findings suggest that both positive and negative indices of social behavior and experience, including those within and not within the youth’s control, are associated with generally unique neural correlates during implicit emotion regulation.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Higher socio-economic status (SES) has been proposed to have facilitating and protective effects on brain and cognition. We ask whether relationships between SES, brain volumes and cognitive ability differ across cohorts, by age and national origin. European and US cohorts covering the lifespan were studied (4-97 years, N = 500 000; 54 000 w/brain imaging). There was substantial heterogeneity across cohorts for all associations. Education was positively related to intracranial (ICV) and total gray matter (GM) volume. Income was related to ICV, but not GM. We did not observe reliable differences in associations as a function of age. SES was more strongly related to brain and cognition in US than European cohorts. Sample representativity varies, and this study cannot identify mechanisms underlying differences in associations across cohorts. Differences in neuroanatomical volumes partially explained SES-cognition relationships. SES was more strongly related to ICV than to GM, implying that SES-cognition relations in adulthood are less likely grounded in neuroprotective effects on GM volume in aging. The relatively stronger SES-ICV associations rather are compatible with SES-brain volume relationships being established early in life, as ICV stabilizes in childhood. The findings underscore that SES has no uniform association with, or impact on, brain and cognition.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic variants associated with brain morphology and substance use behaviors (SUB). However, the genetic overlap between brain structure and SUB has not been well characterized. We leveraged GWAS summary data of 71 brain imaging measures and alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use to investigate their genetic overlap using linkage disequilibrium score regression. We used genomic structural equation modeling to model a “common SUB genetic factor” and investigated its genetic overlap with brain structure. Furthermore, we estimated SUB polygenic risk scores (PRS) and examined whether they predicted brain imaging traits using the Adolescent Behavior and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We identified 8 significant negative genetic correlations, including between (1) alcoholic drinks per week and average cortical thickness, and (2) intracranial volume with age of smoking initiation. We observed 5 positive genetic correlations, including those between (1) insula surface area and lifetime cannabis use, and (2) the common SUB genetic factor and pericalcarine surface area. SUB PRS were associated with brain structure variation in ABCD. Our findings highlight a shared genetic etiology between cortical brain morphology and SUB and suggest that genetic variants associated with SUB may be causally related to brain structure differences.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Structural neuroimaging research has identified a variety of abnormalities in cortical and subcortical structures in children with ADHD. However, studies to date have not employed large, non-referred samples, complete with data on potential confounding variables. Here, we tested for differences in structural MRI measures among children with and without ADHD using data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, the largest paediatric brain imaging study in the USA.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This study examines relations among parental arrest, child executive functioning (EF), and problem behaviors among youth who participated in the baseline assessment of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study ( = 11,875). Participants ranged in age from 9 to 10 ( = 9.91) years, and approximately half were girls (47.9%). Results of regression analyses that controlled for sociodemographic risk factors indicated that children who experienced parental arrest exhibited more internalizing and externalizing behaviors than comparison youth, particularly when their mother vs. father had been arrested. Results of analyses that were disaggregated by child race further revealed that EF appeared to play a differential role among White ( = 5851) and Black ( = 1451) children. Among White children, EF was associated with fewer internalizing and externalizing behaviors regardless of whether or not a parent had been arrested. Among Black children, low levels of EF were associated with more internalizing behaviors in the context of parental arrest vs. no arrest, but high levels of EF did not appear to confer benefits. EF was not significantly related to externalizing behaviors among Black children. Taken together, results suggest that parental arrests have adverse implications for child well-being that warrant continued theoretical and empirical attention. Findings also suggest that, although EF may be broadly beneficial among White children, there appear to be constraints on the extent to which high EF benefits Black children, a finding that is discussed through the lens of racial stratification and that has important implications for future theory, research, and practice.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study aims to retain a demographically diverse sample of youth and one parent across 21 sites throughout its 10-year protocol while minimizing selective (systematic) attrition. To evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts, the ABCD Retention Workgroup (RW) has employed a data-driven approach to examine, track, and intervene via three key metrics: (1) which youth completed visits late; (2) which youth missed visits; and (3) which youth withdrew from the study. The RW actively examines demographic (race, education level, family income) and site factors (visit satisfaction, distance from site, and enrollment in ancillary studies) to strategize efforts that will minimize disengagement and loss of participating youth and parents. Data showed that the most robust primary correlates of late visits were distance from study site, race, and parental education level. Race, lower parental education level, parental employment status, and lower family income were associated with higher odds of missed visits, while being enrolled in one of the ancillary studies was associated with lower odds of missed visits. Additionally, parents who were primary Spanish speakers withdrew at slightly higher rates. These findings provide insight into future targets for proactive retention efforts by the ABCD RW.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

To determine the impact of genetic variants on the brain, we used genetically informed brain atlases in genome-wide association studies of regional cortical surface area and thickness in 39,898 adults and 9136 children. We uncovered 440 genome-wide significant loci in the discovery cohort and 800 from a post hoc combined meta-analysis. Loci in adulthood were largely captured in childhood, showing signatures of negative selection, and were linked to early neurodevelopment and pathways associated with neuropsychiatric risk. Opposing gradations of decreased surface area and increased thickness were associated with common inversion polymorphisms. Inferior frontal regions, encompassing Broca’s area, which is important for speech, were enriched for human-specific genomic elements. Thus, a mixed genetic landscape of conserved and human-specific features is concordant with brain hierarchy and morphogenetic gradients.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Much work has been dedicated to understanding the effects of adverse home environments on brain development. While the school social and learning environment plays a role in child development, little work has been done to investigate the impact of the school environment on the developing brain. The goal of the present study was to examine associations between the school environment, brain structure and connectivity, and mental health.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

In mental health research, it has proven difficult to find measures of brain function that provide reliable indicators of mental health and well-being, including susceptibility to mental health disorders. Recently, a family of data-driven analyses have provided such reliable measures when applied to large, population-level datasets. In the current pre-registered replication study, we show that the canonical correlation analysis (CCA) methods previously developed using resting-state magnetic resonance imaging functional connectivity and subject measures (SMs) of cognition and behaviour from healthy adults are also effective in measuring well-being (a ‘positive-negative axis’) in an independent developmental dataset. Our replication was successful in two out of three of our pre-registered criteria, such that a primary CCA mode’s weights displayed a significant positive relationship and explained a significant amount of variance in both functional connectivity and SMs. The only criterion that was not successful was that compared to other modes the magnitude of variance explained by the primary CCA mode was smaller than predicted, a result that could indicate a developmental trajectory of a primary mode. This replication establishes a signature neurotypical relationship between connectivity and phenotype, opening new avenues of research in neuroscience with clear clinical applications.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Defining reference models for population variation, and the ability to study individual deviations is essential for understanding inter-individual variability and its relation to the onset and progression of medical conditions. In this work, we assembled a reference cohort of neuroimaging data from 82 sites (N=58,836; ages 2-100) and used normative modeling to characterize lifespan trajectories of cortical thickness and subcortical volume. Models are validated against a manually quality checked subset (N=24,354) and we provide an interface for transferring to new data sources. We showcase the clinical value by applying the models to a transdiagnostic psychiatric sample (N=1985), showing they can be used to quantify variability underlying multiple disorders whilst also refining case-control inferences. These models will be augmented with additional samples and imaging modalities as they become available. This provides a common reference platform to bind results from different studies and ultimately paves the way for personalized clinical decision-making.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among youths worldwide, but no available means exist to identify the risk of suicide in this population.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Parents’ psychological problems may affect children’s screen time, but research has been scarce. We examined the association between parental psychological problems and children’s screen media behaviours in a nationally representative sample.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

We develop a deep learning framework, spatio-temporal directed acyclic graph with attention mechanisms (ST-DAG-Att), to predict cognition and disease using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This ST-DAG-Att framework comprises of two neural networks, (1) spatio-temporal graph convolutional network (ST-graph-conv) to learn the spatial and temporal information of functional time series at multiple temporal and spatial graph scales, where the graph is represented by the brain functional network, the spatial convolution is over the space of this graph, and the temporal convolution is over the time dimension; (2) functional connectivity convolutional network (FC-conv) to learn functional connectivity features, where the functional connectivity is derived from embedded multi-scale fMRI time series and the convolutional operation is applied along both edge and node dimensions of the brain functional network. This framework also consists of an attention component, i.e., functional connectivity-based spatial attention (FC-SAtt), that generates a spatial attention map through learning the local dependency among high-level features of functional connectivity and emphasizing meaningful brain regions. Moreover, both the ST-graph-conv and FC-conv networks are designed as feed-forward models structured as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). Our experiments employ two large-scale datasets, Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD, n=7693) and Open Access Series of Imaging Study-3 (OASIS-3, n=1786). Our results show that the ST-DAG-Att model is generalizable from cognition prediction to age prediction. It is robust to independent samples obtained from different sites of the ABCD study. It outperforms the existing machine learning techniques, including support vector regression (SVR), elastic net’s mixture with random forest, spatio-temporal graph convolution, and BrainNetCNN.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Temporal stability of individual differences is an important prerequisite for accurate tracking of prospective relationships between neurocognition and real-world behavioral outcomes such as substance abuse and psychopathology. Here we report age-related changes and longitudinal test-retest stability (TRS) for the Neurocognition battery of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which included the NIH Toolbox (TB) Cognitive Domain and additional memory and visuospatial processing tests administered at baseline (ages 9-11) and two-year follow-up. As expected, performance improved significantly with age, but the effect size varied broadly, with Pattern Comparison and the Crystallized Cognition Composite showing the largest age-related gain (Cohen’s d:.99 and.97, respectively). TRS ranged from fair (Flanker test: r = 0.44) to excellent (Crystallized Cognition Composite: r = 0.82). A comparison of longitudinal changes and cross-sectional age-related differences within baseline and follow-up assessments suggested that, for some measures, longitudinal changes may be confounded by practice effects and differences in task stimuli or procedure between baseline and follow-up. In conclusion, a subset of measures showed good stability of individual differences despite significant age-related changes, warranting their use as prospective predictors. However, caution is needed in the interpretation of observed longitudinal changes as indicators of neurocognitive development.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Adolescence is characterized by dramatic physical, social, and emotional changes, making teens particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This longitudinal study identifies young adolescents who are most vulnerable to the psychological toll of the pandemic and provides insights to inform strategies to help adolescents cope better in times of crisis.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Low socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood is associated with deficits in executive function and changes in cortical morphology. Furthermore, rates of childhood obesity are greater among low SES children and childhood obesity is also associated with cortical alterations and impaired neurocognition, specifically in the domain of executive function. To investigate the influence of BMI on the relationships between SES and both neurocognition and brain morphology, we used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to construct multiple linear regression models and conduct mediation analyses. Overall, SES as measured by household income, highest level of parental education, and area deprivation, was associated with lower BMI, greater total and prefrontal cortical volume, and better performance on assessments of executive function. Mediation analysis indicated that BMI had a significant indirect effect on associations between area deprivation and both total and prefrontal cortical volumes. BMI also played a mediating role in the associations between area deprivation and composite neurocognitive scores, which were driven by performance on tasks of working memory and cognitive flexibility, but not cognitive control. These findings suggest that BMI should be considered in future studies investigating the relationship between low SES and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Many studies have shown low birth weight is associated with psychopathology later in life, particularly attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The association is well-replicated, independent from a variety of potential familial confounds, and follows a dose-response curve (decreasing birth weight linked with increasing odds of disorder). However, the specificity of the association to attention problems is called into question by the extent of comorbidity in ADHD, and recent findings that the association is stronger for autism than ADHD. We test the relative dose-response strength of birth weight on multiple aspects of behavior to explore specificity of the effect to attention problems. We also test recent suggestions that the association between birth weight and attention problems is driven by males. Our sample consisted of 9,076 children aged 9-10 from the United States (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study). Outcomes included 9 problem-scales and the total problems scale from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Attention problems were the most strongly associated with birth weight after controlling for gestational age, potential familial confounds, and multiple testing, supporting the outcome-specificity of this association. Contrary to recent registry-based findings, an association between birth weight and an autism scale was not observed. Sex moderated the effect of birth weight on total problems, attention problems and aggressive behavior such that these inverse associations were strongly driven by males. Our findings have strong implications for sex-specific prediction and etiological models of childhood psychopathology.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

One of the challenges in human neuroscience is to uncover associations between brain organization and psychopathology in order to better understand the biological underpinnings of mental disorders. Here, we aimed to characterize the neural correlates of psychopathology dimensions obtained using two conceptually different data-driven approaches.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Systemic environmental disadvantage relates to a host of health and functional outcomes. Specific structural factors have seldom been linked to neural structure, however, clouding understanding of putative mechanisms. Examining relations during childhood/preadolescence, a dynamic period of neurodevelopment, could aid bridge this gap. A total of 10,213 youth were recruited from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. Self-report and objective measures (Census and Federal bureau of investigation metrics extracted using geocoding) of environmental exposures were used, including stimulation indexing lack of safety and high attentional demands, discrepancy indexing social exclusion/lack of belonging, and deprivation indexing lack of environmental enrichment. Environmental measures were related to cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume regions, controlling for other environmental exposures and accounting for other brain regions. Self-report (|β| = .04-.09) and objective (|β| = .02-.06) environmental domains related to area/thickness in overlapping (e.g., insula, caudal anterior cingulate), and unique regions (e.g., for discrepancy, rostral anterior and isthmus cingulate, implicated in socioemotional functions; for stimulation, precuneus, critical for cue reactivity and integration of environmental cues; and for deprivation, superior frontal, integral to executive functioning). For stimulation and discrepancy exposures, self-report and objective measures showed similarities in correlate regions, while deprivation exposures evidenced distinct correlates for self-report and objective measures. Results represent a necessary step toward broader work aimed at establishing mechanisms and correlates of structural disadvantage, highlighting the relevance of going beyond aggregate models by considering types of environmental factors, and the need to incorporate both subjective and objective measurements in these efforts.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The prevalence of eating disorders (EDs) in young children remains relatively unknown. Here, we aimed to assess the prevalence of anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), binge ED (BED), and their subclinical derivatives, among 10- to 11-year-old children in the United States.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Polygenic scores (PGS) are commonly evaluated in terms of their predictive accuracy at the population level by the proportion of phenotypic variance they explain. To be useful for precision medicine applications, they also need to be evaluated at the individual level when phenotypes are not necessarily already known. We investigated the stability of PGS in European American (EUR) and African American (AFR)-ancestry individuals from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort and the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study using different discovery genome-wide association study (GWAS) results for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), type 2 diabetes (T2D), and height. We found that pairs of EUR-ancestry GWAS for the same trait had genetic correlations >0.92. However, PGS calculated from pairs of same-ancestry and different-ancestry GWAS had correlations that ranged from <0.01 to 0.74. PGS stability was greater for height than for PTSD or T2D. A series of height GWAS in the UK Biobank suggested that correlation between PGS is strongly dependent on the extent of sample overlap between the discovery GWAS. Focusing on the upper end of the PGS distribution, different discovery GWAS do not consistently identify the same individuals in the upper quantiles, with the best case being 60% of individuals above the 80th percentile of PGS overlapping from one height GWAS to another. The degree of overlap decreases sharply as higher quantiles, less heritable traits, and different-ancestry GWAS are considered. PGS computed from different discovery GWAS have only modest correlation at the individual level, underscoring the need to proceed cautiously with integrating PGS into precision medicine applications.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Parental knowledge/monitoring is negatively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms, suggesting monitoring could be a target for prevention and treatment. However, no study has rigorously addressed the possibility that this association is spurious, leaving the clinical and etiological implications unclear. The goal of this study was to conduct a more rigorous test of whether knowledge/monitoring is causally related to depressive symptoms. 7940 youth (ages 10.5-15.6 years, 49% female) at 21 sites across the U.S. completed measures of parental knowledge/monitoring and their own depressive symptoms at four waves 11-22 weeks apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, monitoring and depression were examined in standard, between-family regression models. Second, within-family changes in monitoring and depression between assessments were examined in first differenced regressions. Because the latter models control for stable, between-family differences, they comprise a stronger test of a causal relation. In standard, between-family models, parental monitoring and youths’ depressive symptoms were negatively associated (standardized [Formula: see text]= -0.22, 95% CI = [-0.25, -0.20], p < 0.001). In first-differenced, within-family models, the association shrunk by about 55% (standardized [Formula: see text]= -0.10, 95% CI = [-0.12, -0.08], p < 0.001). The magnitude of within-family association remained similar when adjusting for potential time-varying confounders and did not vary significantly by youth sex, age, or history of depressive disorder. Thus, in this community-based sample, much of the prima facie association between parental knowledge/monitoring and youths’ depressive symptoms was driven by confounding variables rather than a causal process. Given the evidence to date, a clinical focus on increasing parental knowledge/monitoring should not be expected to produce meaningfully large improvements in youths’ depression.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Paediatric overweight and obesity (OW/OB) constitute a serious public health concern. Given that psychological problems may be key contributors to the onset and maintenance of paediatric obesity, the present study examined past and current psychiatric comorbidities across the weight spectrum during middle childhood among a nationally representative sample.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Sleep disturbance is known to be associated with various mental disorders and often precedes the onset of mental disorders in youth. Given the increasingly acknowledged bidirectional influence between sleep disturbance and mental disorders, we aim to identify a shared neural mechanism that underlies sleep disturbance and mental disorders in preadolescents. We analyzed a dataset of 9,350 9-10 year-old children, among whom 8,845 had 1-year follow-up data, from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Linear mixed-effects models, mediation analysis, and longitudinal mediation analysis were used to investigate the relationship between sleep disturbance, mental disorders, and resting-state network connectivity. Out of 186 unique connectivities, the effect of total sleep disturbance (TSP, from Sleep Disturbance Scale) and mental problems (MP, from Child Behavior Checklist) converged in the default mode network (DMN) and the dorsal attention network (DAN). Within- and between-network connectivities (DMN-DAN, DMN-DMN, DAN-DAN) mediated the relationship between baseline TSD and MP at 1-year follow-up and the relationship between baseline MP and TSD at 1-year follow-up. The pathway model in which sleep disturbance and mental problems affect each other through two anticorrelated brain networks (DMN and DAN) suggests a common neural mechanism between them. Longitudinally, a less segregated DMN and DAN is associated with negative outcomes on mental well-being and sleep disturbance a year later. These findings have important implications for the design of prevention and neurofeedback intervention for mental disorders and sleep problems.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Childhood sleep problems are common and among the most frequent and impairing comorbidities of childhood psychiatric disorders. In adults, sleep disturbances are heritable and show strong genetic associations with brain morphology; however, little is known about the genetic architecture of childhood sleep and potential etiological links between sleep, brain development, and pediatric-onset psychiatric symptoms.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

General psychopathology and cognition are likely to have a bidirectional influence on each other. Yet, the relationship between brain structure, psychopathology, and cognition remains unclear. This brief report investigates the association between structural properties of the cerebral cortex [surface area, cortical thickness, intracortical myelination indexed by the T1w/T2w ratio, and neurite density assessed by restriction spectrum imaging (RSI)] with general psychopathology and cognition in a sample of children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Higher levels of psychopathology and lower levels of cognitive ability were associated with a smaller cortical surface area. Inter-regionally-across the cerebral cortex-the strength of association between an area and psychopathology is strongly correlated with the strength of association between an area and cognition. Taken together, structural deviations particularly observed in the cortical surface area influence both psychopathology and cognition.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Cognition is robustly associated with substance involvement. This relationship is attributable to multiple factors, including genetics, though such contributions show inconsistent patterns in the literature. For instance, genome-wide association studies point to potential positive relationships between educational achievement and common substance use but negative relationships with heavy and/or problematic substance use.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Gray matter morphometry studies have lent seminal insights into the etiology of mental illness. Existing research has primarily focused on adults and then, typically on a single disorder. Examining brain characteristics in late childhood, when the brain is preparing to undergo significant adolescent reorganization and various forms of serious psychopathology are just first emerging, may allow for a unique and highly important perspective of overlapping and unique pathogenesis.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is a longitudinal study of adolescent brain development and health that includes over 11,800 youth in the United States. The ABCD study includes broad developmental domains, and gender and sexuality are two of these with noted changes across late childhood and early adolescence. The Gender Identity and Sexual Health (GISH) workgroup recommends measures of gender and sexuality for the ABCD study, prioritizing those that are developmentally sensitive, capture individual differences in the experience of gender and sexuality, and minimize participant burden. This manuscript describes the gender and sexuality measures used in ABCD and provides guidance for researchers using these data. Data showing the utility of these measures and longitudinal trends are presented. Including assessment of gender and sexuality in ABCD allows for characterization of developmental trajectories of gender and sexuality, and the broad scope of ABCD data collection allows examination of identity development in an intersectional manner.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Verbal memory impairment is one of the most prominent cognitive deficits in psychosis. However, few studies have investigated the genetic basis of verbal memory in a neurodevelopmental context, and most genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been conducted in European-ancestry populations. We conducted a GWAS on verbal memory in a maximum of 11,017 participants aged 8.9 to 11.1 years in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, recruited from a diverse population in the United States. Verbal memory was assessed by the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, which included three measures of verbal memory: immediate recall, short-delay recall, and long-delay recall. We adopted a mixed-model approach to perform a joint GWAS of all participants, adjusting for ancestral background and familial relatedness. The inclusion of participants from all ancestries increased the power of the GWAS. Two novel genome-wide significant associations were found for short-delay and long-delay recall verbal memory. In particular, one locus (rs9896243) associated with long-delay recall was mapped to the NSF (N-Ethylmaleimide Sensitive Factor, Vesicle Fusing ATPase) gene, indicating the role of membrane fusion in adolescent verbal memory. Based on the GWAS in the European subset, we estimated the SNP-heritability to be 15% to 29% for the three verbal memory traits. We found that verbal memory was genetically correlated with schizophrenia, providing further evidence supporting verbal memory as an endophenotype for psychosis.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This cross-sectional study reviews findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study on digital media use by US youths during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Functional MRI (fMRI) is widely used to study the functional organization of normal and pathological brains. However, the fMRI signal may be contaminated by subject motion artifacts that are only partially mitigated by motion correction strategies. These artifacts lead to distance-dependent biases in the inferred signal correlations. To mitigate these spurious effects, motion-corrupted volumes are censored from fMRI time series. Censoring can result in discontinuities in the fMRI signal, which may lead to substantial alterations in functional connectivity analysis. We propose a new approach to recover the missing entries from censoring based on structured low rank matrix completion. We formulated the artifact-reduction problem as the recovery of a super-resolved matrix from unprocessed fMRI measurements. We enforced a low rank prior on a large structured matrix, formed from the samples of the time series, to recover the missing entries. The recovered time series, in addition to being motion compensated, are also slice-time corrected at a fine temporal resolution. To achieve a fast and memory-efficient solution for our proposed optimization problem, we employed a variable splitting strategy. We validated the algorithm with simulations, data acquired under different motion conditions, and datasets from the ABCD study. Functional connectivity analysis showed that the proposed reconstruction resulted in connectivity matrices with lower errors in pair-wise correlation than non-censored and censored time series based on a standard processing pipeline. In addition, seed-based correlation analyses showed improved delineation of the default mode network. These demonstrate that the method can effectively reduce the adverse effects of motion in fMRI analysis.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate adolescents’ moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) during the COVID-19 pandemic with regards to sociodemographic characteristics and determine mental health and resiliency factors associated with MVPA among a diverse national sample of adolescents ages 10-14 years. Data were collected during the pandemic in May 2020 from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD, N = 5,153), a national prospective cohort study in the U.S. MVPA was quantified as the product of reported duration and frequency (hours per week), which was further summarized as the proportion meeting age-appropriate 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. A similar estimate was generated using MVPA data collected prior to the pandemic. Mental health and resiliency measures were collected during the pandemic. Regression models examined associations between mental health or resiliency measures and MVPA during the pandemic. Median MVPA was 2 h per week (IQR 0, 6). Overall, the percentage of the cohort meeting MVPA guidelines decreased from 16.1% (pre-pandemic) to 8.9% (during the pandemic). Racial/ethnic minority adolescents and adolescents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were significantly less likely to meet MVPA guidelines during the pandemic. Poorer mental health, COVID-related worry, and stress were associated with lower MVPA, while more social support and coping behaviors were associated with higher MVPA during the pandemic. In this large, national sample of adolescents, the proportion of those meeting MVPA Guidelines was lower during the COVID-19 pandemic, with significant disparities by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Interventions to promote social support and coping behaviors may improve MVPA levels among adolescents during the pandemic.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Suicide is among the leading causes of death in children and adolescents. There are well-known risk factors of suicide, including childhood abuse, family conflicts, social adversity, and psychopathology. While suicide risk is also known to be heritable, few studies have investigated genetic risk in younger individuals.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Characterizing the interactions among attention, cognitive control, and emotion during adolescence may provide important insights into why this critical developmental period coincides with a dramatic increase in risk for psychopathology. However, it has proven challenging to develop a single neurobehavioral task that simultaneously engages and differentially measures these diverse domains. In the current study, we describe properties of performance on the Emotional Word-Emotional Face Stroop (EWEFS) task in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a task that allows researchers to concurrently measure processing speed/attentional vigilance (i.e., performance on congruent trials), inhibitory control (i.e., Stroop interference effect), and emotional information processing (i.e., difference in performance on trials with happy as compared to angry distracting faces). We first demonstrate that the task manipulations worked as designed and that Stroop performance is associated with multiple cognitive constructs derived from different measures at a prior time point. We then show that Stroop metrics tapping these three domains are preferentially associated with aspects of externalizing psychopathology and inattention. These results highlight the potential of the EWEFS task to help elucidate the longitudinal dynamics of attention, inhibitory control, and emotion across adolescent development, dynamics which may be altered by level of psychopathology.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Adult cortex is organized into distributed functional communities. Yet, little is known about community architecture of children’s brains. Here, we uncovered the community structure of cortex in childhood using fMRI data from 670 children aged 9-11 years (48% female, replication sample n=544, 56% female) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. We first applied a data-driven community detection approach to cluster cortical regions into communities, then employed a generative model-based approach called the weighted stochastic block model to further probe community interactions. Children showed similar community structure to adults, as defined by Yeo and colleagues in 2011, in early-developing sensory and motor communities, but differences emerged in transmodal areas. Children have more cortical territory in the limbic community, which is involved in emotion processing, than adults. Regions in association cortex interact more flexibly across communities, creating uncertainty for the model-based assignment algorithm, and perhaps reflecting cortical boundaries that are not yet solidified. Uncertainty was highest for cingulo-opercular areas involved in flexible deployment of cognitive control. Activation and deactivation patterns during a working memory task showed that both the data-driven approach and a set of adult communities statistically capture functional organization in middle childhood. Collectively, our findings suggest that community boundaries are not solidified by middle childhood.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

We examined COVID-19 symptoms and infection rates, disruptions to functioning, and moderators of pandemic response for 620 youth with ADHD and 614 individually matched controls (70% male;  = 12.4) participating in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. There were no group differences in COVID-19 infection rate; however, youth with ADHD were more likely to exhibit COVID-19 symptoms ( = 0.25), greater sleep problems ( = -0.52), fear and negative emotions to infection risk ( = -0.56), trouble with remote learning ( = -0.54), rule-breaking behavior related to COVID-19 restrictions ( = -0.23), family conflict ( = -0.13), and were less prepared for the next school year ( = 0.38). Youth with ADHD were less responsive to protective environmental variables (e.g., parental monitoring, school engagement) during the pandemic and may need more specialized support with return to in-person schooling and daily activities.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

We used multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) modeling to examine general factors of psychopathology in three samples of youth (s = 2119, 303, 592) for whom three informants reported on the youth’s psychopathology (e.g., child, parent, teacher). Empirical support for the -factor diminished in multi-informant models compared with mono-informant models: the correlation between externalizing and internalizing factors decreased and the general factor in bifactor models essentially reflected externalizing. Widely used MTMM-informed approaches for modeling multi-informant data cannot distinguish between competing interpretations of the patterns of effects we observed, including that the -factor reflects, in part, evaluative consistency bias or that psychopathology manifests differently across contexts (e.g., home vs. school). Ultimately, support for the -factor may be stronger in mono-informant designs, although it is does not entirely vanish in multi-informant models. Instead, the general factor of psychopathology in any given mono-informant model likely reflects a complex mix of variances, some substantive and some methodological.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

To describe the relationship between parent and adolescent reports of adolescent recreational screen time and to determine sociodemographic predictors of recreational screen time reporting differences during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Delayed reward discounting (DRD) refers to the extent to which an individual devalues a reward based on a temporal delay and is known to be elevated in individuals with substance use disorders and many mental illnesses. DRD has been linked previously with both features of brain structure and function, as well as various behavioral, psychological, and life-history factors. However, there has been little work on the neurobiological and behavioral antecedents of DRD in childhood. This is an important question, as understanding the antecedents of DRD can provide signs of mechanisms in the development of psychopathology. The present study used baseline data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study ( = 4,042) to build machine learning models to predict DRD at the first follow-up visit, 1 year later. In separate machine learning models, we tested elastic net regression, random forest regression, light gradient boosting regression, and support vector regression. In five-fold cross-validation on the training set, models using an array of questionnaire/task variables were able to predict DRD, with these findings generalizing to a held-out (i.e., “lockbox”) test set of 20% of the sample. Key predictive variables were neuropsychological test performance at baseline, socioeconomic status, screen media activity, psychopathology, parenting, and personality. However, models using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived brain variables did not reliably predict DRD in either the cross-validation or held-out test set. These results suggest a combination of questionnaire/task variables as antecedents of excessive DRD in late childhood, which may presage the development of problematic substance use in adolescence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Although the prevalence rates of preadolescent eating disorders (EDs) are on the rise, considerably less is known about the correlates and treatment of EDs in this age group. Clarifying the epidemiology of EDs in preadolescent children is a necessary first step to understand the nature and scope of this problem in this age group.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The apolipoprotein E gene ε4 allele (APOE ε4) and higher circulating level of C-reactive protein (CRP) have been extensively investigated as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Paradoxically, APOE ε4 has been associated with lower levels of blood CRP in middle-aged and older populations. However, few studies have investigated this intriguing relation and its impact on neurological markers for AD in younger ages, nor across the whole lifespan. Here, we examine associations of blood CRP levels, APOE ε4, and biomarkers for AD in a cognitively healthy lifespan cohort (N up to 749; 20-81 years of age) and replicate the findings in UK Biobank (N = 304 322; 37-72 years of age), the developmental ABCD study (N = 10 283; 9-11 years of age), and a middle-aged sample (N = 339; 40-65 years of age). Hippocampal volume, brain amyloid-β (Aβ) plaque levels, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of Aβ and tau species, and neurofilament protein light protein (NFL) were used as AD biomarkers in subsamples. In addition, we examined the genetic contribution to the variation of CRP levels over different CRP ranges using polygenic scores for CRP (PGS-CRP). Our results show APOE ε4 consistently associates with low blood CRP levels across all age groups (p < 0.05). Strikingly, both ε4 and PGS-CRP associated mainly with blood CRP levels within the low range (<5mg/L). We then show both APOE ε4 and high CRP levels associate with smaller hippocampus volumes across the lifespan (p < 0.025). APOE ε4 was associated with high Aβ plaque levels in the brain (FDR-corrected p = 8.69×10), low levels of CSF Aβ42 (FDR-corrected p = 6.9×10), and lower ratios of Aβ42 to Aβ40 (FDR-corrected p = 5.08×10). Blood CRP levels were weakly correlated with higher ratio of CSF Aβ42 to Aβ40 (p = 0.03, FDR-corrected p = 0.4). APOE ε4 did not correlate with blood concentrations of another 9 inflammatory cytokines, and none of these cytokines correlated with AD biomarkers. CONCLUSION: The inverse correlation between APOEε 4 and blood CRP levels existed before any pathological AD biomarker was observed, and only in the low CRP level range. Thus, we suggest to investigate whether APOEε 4 can confer risk by being associated with a lower inflammatory response to daily exposures, possibly leading to greater accumulation of low-grade inflammatory stress throughout life. A lifespan perspective is needed to understand this relationship concerning risk of developing AD.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Prior research indicates that lower resting-state functional coupling between two brain networks, lateral frontoparietal network (LFPN) and default mode network (DMN), relates to cognitive test performance, for children and adults. However, most of the research that led to this conclusion has been conducted with non-representative samples of individuals from higher-income backgrounds, and so further studies including participants from a broader range of socioeconomic backgrounds are required. Here, in a pre-registered study, we analyzed resting-state fMRI from 6839 children ages 9-10 years from the ABCD dataset. For children from households defined as being above poverty (family of 4 with income > $25,000, or family of 5+ with income > $35,000), we replicated prior findings; that is, we found that better performance on cognitive tests correlated with weaker LFPN-DMN coupling. For children from households defined as being in poverty, the direction of association was reversed, on average: better performance was instead directionally related to stronger LFPN-DMN connectivity, though there was considerable variability. Among children in households below poverty, the direction of this association was predicted in part by features of their environments, such as school type and parent-reported neighborhood safety. These results highlight the importance of including representative samples in studies of child cognitive development.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The variation in experiences between high and low-socioeconomic status contexts are posited to play a crucial role in shaping the developing brain and may explain differences in child outcomes. Yet, examinations of SES and brain development have largely been limited to distal proxies of these experiences (e.g., income comparisons). The current study sought to disentangle the effects of multiple socioeconomic indices and dimensions of more proximal experiences on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in a sample of 7834 youth (aged 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We applied moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA) to establish measurement invariance among three latent environmental dimensions of experience (material/economic deprivation, caregiver social support, and psychosocial threat). Results revealed measurement biases as a function of child age, sex, racial group, family income, and parental education, which were statistically adjusted in the final MNLFA scores. Mixed-effects models demonstrated that socioeconomic indices and psychosocial threat differentially predicted variation in frontolimbic networks, and threat statistically moderated the association between income and connectivity between the dorsal and ventral attention networks. Findings illuminate the importance of reducing measurement biases to gain a more socioculturally-valid understanding of the complex and nuanced links between socioeconomic context, children’s experiences, and neurodevelopment.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

While there is a substantial amount of work studying multilingualism’s effect on cognitive functions, little is known about how the multilingual experience modulates the brain as a whole. In this study, we analyzed data of over 1,000 children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to examine whether monolinguals and multilinguals differ in executive function, functional brain connectivity, and brain-behavior associations. We observed significantly better performance from multilingual children than monolinguals in working-memory tasks. In one finding, we were able to classify multilinguals from monolinguals using only their whole-brain functional connectome at rest and during an emotional n-back task. Compared to monolinguals, the multilingual group had different functional connectivity mainly in the occipital lobe and subcortical areas during the emotional n-back task and in the occipital lobe and prefrontal cortex at rest. In contrast, we did not find any differences in behavioral performance and functional connectivity when performing a stop-signal task. As a second finding, we investigated the degree to which behavior is reflected in the brain by implementing a connectome-based behavior prediction approach. The multilingual group showed a significant correlation between observed and connectome-predicted individual working-memory performance scores, while the monolingual group did not show any correlations. Overall, our observations suggest that multilingualism enhances executive function and reliably modulates the corresponding brain functional connectome, distinguishing multilinguals from monolinguals even at the developmental stage.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Despite nonoverlapping diagnostic criteria, internalizing and externalizing disorders show substantial comorbidity. This comorbidity is attributable, at least in part, to transdiagnostic neuroaffective mechanisms. Both unipolar depression and externalizing disorders are characterized by structural and functional compromises in the striatum and its projections to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and other frontal regions. Smaller volumes and dampened reward responding in these regions are associated with anhedonia and irritability – mood states that cut across the internalizing and externalizing spectra. In contrast, smaller amygdala volumes and dampened amygdala function differentiate externalizing disorders from internalizing disorders. Little is known, however, about associations between internalizing-externalizing comorbidity and brain volumes in these regions, or whether such patterns differ by sex. Using a transdiagnostic, research domain criteria (RDoC)-informed approach, we evaluate associations between heterotypic (Internalizing × Externalizing) symptom interactions and striatal, amygdalar, and ACC volumes among participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study ( = 6,971, mean age 9.9 years, 51.6% female). Heterotypic symptoms were associated with ACC volumes for both sexes, over and above the main effects of internalizing and externalizing alone. However, heterotypic comorbidity was associated with larger ACC volumes for girls, but with smaller ACC volumes for boys. These findings suggest a need for further studies and transdiagnostic assessment by sex.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Alterations to striatal reward pathways have been identified in individuals with psychosis. They are hypothesized to be a key mechanism that generate psychotic symptoms through the production of aberrant attribution of motivational salience and are proposed to result from accumulated childhood adversity and genetic risk, making the striatal system hyper-responsive to stress. However, few studies have examined whether children with psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) also exhibit these alterations, limiting our understanding of how differences in reward processing relate to hallucinations and delusional ideation in childhood. Consequently, we examined whether PLEs and PLE-related distress were associated with reward-related activation in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc). The sample consisted of children ( = 6718) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study aged 9-10 years who had participated in the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task in functional MRI. We used robust mixed-effects linear regression models to investigate the relationship between PLEs and NAcc activation during the reward anticipation and reward outcome stages of the MID task. Analyses were adjusted for gender, household income, ethnicity, depressive symptoms, movement in the scanner, pubertal development, scanner ID, subject and family ID. There was no reliable association between PLEs and alterations to anticipation- or outcome-related striatal reward processing. We discuss the implications for developmental models of psychosis and suggest a developmental delay model of how PLEs may arise at this stage of development.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Reduced volumes in brain regions of interest (ROIs), primarily from adult samples, are associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We extended this work to children using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® (N = 11,848; M = 9.92). Structural equation modeling and an elastic-net (EN) machine-learning approach were used to identify potential effects of traumatic events (TEs) on PTSD symptoms (PTSDsx) directly, and indirectly via the volumes 300 subcortical and cortical ROIs. We then estimated the genetic and environmental variation in the phenotypes. TEs were directly associated with PTSDsx (r = 0.92) in children, but their indirect effects (r < 0.0004)-via the volumes of EN-identified subcortical and cortical ROIs-were negligible at this age. Additive genetic factors explained a modest proportion of the variance in TEs (23.4%) and PTSDsx (21.3%), and accounted for most of the variance of EN-identified volumes of four of the five subcortical (52.4-61.8%) three of the nine cortical ROIs (46.4-53.3%) and cerebral white matter in the left hemisphere (57.4%). Environmental factors explained most of the variance in TEs (C = 61.6%, E = 15.1%), PTSDsx (residual-C = 18.4%, residual-E = 21.8%), right lateral ventricle (C = 15.2%, E = 43.1%) and six of the nine EN-identified cortical ROIs (C = 4.0-13.6%, E = 56.7-74.8%). There is negligible evidence that the volumes of brain ROIs are associated with the indirect effects of TEs on PTSDsx at this age. Overall, environmental factors accounted for more of the variation in TEs and PTSDsx. Whereas additive genetic factors accounted for most of the variability in the volumes of a minority of cortical and in most of subcortical ROIs.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

During late childhood behavioral changes, such as increased risk-taking and emotional reactivity, have been associated with the maturation of cortico-cortico and cortico-subcortical circuits. Understanding microstructural changes in both white matter and subcortical regions may aid our understanding of how individual differences in these behaviors emerge. Restriction spectrum imaging (RSI) is a framework for modelling diffusion-weighted imaging that decomposes the diffusion signal from a voxel into hindered, restricted, and free compartments. This yields greater specificity than conventional methods of characterizing diffusion. Using RSI, we quantified voxelwise restricted diffusion across the brain and measured age associations in a large sample (n = 8086) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study aged 9-14 years. Older participants showed a higher restricted signal fraction across the brain, with the largest associations in subcortical regions, particularly the basal ganglia and ventral diencephalon. Importantly, age associations varied with respect to the cytoarchitecture within white matter fiber tracts and subcortical structures, for example age associations differed across thalamic nuclei. This suggests that age-related changes may map onto specific cell populations or circuits and highlights the utility of voxelwise compared to ROI-wise analyses. Future analyses will aim to understand the relevance of this microstructural developmental for behavioral outcomes.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Sleep disturbance is characteristic of schizophrenia and at-risk populations, suggesting a possible etiological role in psychosis. Biological mechanisms underlying associations between sleep and psychosis vulnerability are unclear, although reduced sleep-regulatory brain structure volumes are a proposed contributor. This study is the first to examine relationships between psychotic-like experiences (PLEs; subclinical symptoms reflecting psychosis vulnerability/risk), sleep, and brain volumes in youth.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Outdoor particulate matter 2.5 μm or less in diameter (PM2.5) is a ubiquitous environmental neurotoxicant that may affect the developing brain. Little is known about associations between PM2.5 and white matter connectivity.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Perceived discrimination is one of the reasons behind racial/ethnic health disparities. However, less is known about racial and ethnic groups differ in social determinants of discrimination. This study aimed to compare the association between household income and perceived discrimination among American children of different racial/ethnic groups.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

While increased parental education reduces children’s sleep problems, less is known about racial variation in such protection. According to Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) theory, economic resources such as parental education show weaker health effects for minority groups such as Blacks and Latinos than non-Latino Whites, which is due to racism and social stratification. In this study, we investigated the association between parental education and children’s sleep problems, as a proxy of sleep problems, by race.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Discrimination has been associated with adverse mental health outcomes, though it is unclear how early in life this association becomes apparent. Implicit emotion regulation, developing during childhood, is a foundational skill tied to a range of outcomes. Implicit emotion regulation has yet to be tested as an associated process for mental illness symptoms that can often emerge during this sensitive developmental period. Youth aged 9-11 were recruited for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Associations between psychotic-like experiences, depressive symptoms, and total discrimination (due to race, ethnicity, nationality, weight, or sexual minority status) were tested, as well as associations with implicit emotion regulation measures (emotional updating working memory and inhibitory control). Analyses examined whether associations with symptoms were mediated by implicit emotion regulation. Discrimination related to decreased implicit emotion regulation performance, and increased endorsement of depressive symptoms and psychotic-like experiences. Emotional updating working memory performance partially mediated the association between discrimination and psychotic-like experiences, while emotional inhibitory control did not. Discrimination and implicit emotion regulation could serve as putative transdiagnostic markers of vulnerability. Results support the utility of using multiple units of analysis to improve understanding of complex emerging neurocognitive functions and developmentally sensitive periods.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder, collectively referred to as disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs), are prevalent psychiatric disorders in children. Early diagnosis of DBDs is crucial because they can increase the risks of other mental health and substance use disorders without appropriate psychosocial interventions and treatment. However, diagnosing DBDs is challenging as they are often comorbid with other disorders, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression. In this study, a multimodal ensemble three-dimensional convolutional neural network (3D CNN) deep learning model was used to classify children with DBDs and typically developing children. The study participants included 419 females and 681 males, aged 108-131 months who were enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Children were grouped based on the presence of DBDs ( = 550) and typically developing ( = 550); assessments were based on the scores from the Child Behavior Checklist and on the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-age Children-Present and Lifetime version for DSM-5. The diffusion, structural, and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data were used as input data to the 3D CNN. The model achieved 72% accuracy in classifying children with DBDs with 70% sensitivity, 72% specificity, and an F1-score of 70. In addition, the discriminative power of the classifier was investigated by identifying the cortical and subcortical regions primarily involved in the prediction of DBDs using a gradient-weighted class activation mapping method. The classification results were compared with those obtained using the three neuroimaging modalities individually, and a connectome-based graph CNN and a multi-scale recurrent neural network using only the rs-fMRI data.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

There has been a huge interest in studying human brain connectomes inferred from different imaging modalities and exploring their relationships with human traits, such as cognition. Brain connectomes are usually represented as networks, with nodes corresponding to different regions of interest (ROIs) and edges to connection strengths between ROIs. Due to the high-dimensionality and non-Euclidean nature of networks, it is challenging to depict their population distribution and relate them to human traits. Current approaches focus on summarizing the network using either pre-specified topological features or principal components analysis (PCA). In this paper, building on recent advances in deep learning, we develop a nonlinear latent factor model to characterize the population distribution of brain graphs and infer their relationships to human traits. We refer to our method as Graph AuTo-Encoding (GATE). We applied GATE to two large-scale brain imaging datasets, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study and the Human Connectome Project (HCP) for adults, to study the structural brain connectome and its relationship with cognition. Numerical results demonstrate huge advantages of GATE over competitors in terms of prediction accuracy, statistical inference, and computing efficiency. We found that the structural connectome has a stronger association with a wide range of human cognitive traits than was apparent using previous approaches.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide with > 50% of cases emerging before the age of 25 years. Large-scale neuroimaging studies in depression implicate robust structural brain differences in the disorder. However, most studies have been conducted in adults and therefore, the temporal origins of depression-related imaging features remain largely unknown. This has important implications for understanding aetiology and informing timings of potential intervention.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Primary care practitioners (PCPs) provide care to adolescents in the context of their families. Supporting parent/caregiver knowledge of symptoms can create opportunities for better recognition of symptoms that can then lead to early identification, intervention, and prevention of poor outcomes.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death in youth. Understanding the neural correlates of suicide ideation (SI) in children is crucial to ongoing efforts to understand and prevent youth suicide. This study characterized key neural networks during rest and emotion task conditions in an epidemiologically informed sample of children who report current, past, or no SI.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Childhood psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) are associated with a range of impairments; a subset of children experiencing PLEs will develop psychiatric disorders, including psychotic disorders. A potential distinguishing factor between benign PLEs versus PLEs that are clinically relevant is whether PLEs are distressing and/or persistent. The current study used three waves of Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ (ABCD) study PLEs assessments to examine the extent to which persistent and/or distressing PLEs were associated with relevant baseline risk factors (e.g., cognition) and functioning/mental health service utilization domains. Four groups varying in PLE persistence and distress endorsement were created based on all available data in ABCD Release 3.0, with group membership not contingent on complete data: persistent distressing PLEs (n = 272), transient distressing PLEs (n = 298), persistent non-distressing PLEs (n = 221), and transient non-distressing PLEs (n = 536) groups. Using hierarchical linear models, results indicated youth with distressing PLEs, whether transient or persistent, showed delayed developmental milestones (β = 0.074, 95%CI:0.013,0.134) and altered structural MRI metrics (β = -0.0525, 95%CI:-0.100,-0.005). Importantly, distress interacted with PLEs persistence for the domains of functioning/mental health service utilization (β = 0.079, 95%CI:0.016,0.141), other reported psychopathology (β = 0.101, 95%CI:0.030,0.170), cognition (β = -0.052, 95%CI:0.-0.099,-0.002), and environmental adversity (β = 0.045, 95%CI:0.003,0.0.86; although no family history effects), with the interaction characterized by greatest impairment in the persistent distressing PLEs group. These results have implications for disentangling the importance of distress and persistence for PLEs with regards to impairments, including functional, pathophysiological, and environmental outcomes. These novel longitudinal data underscore that it is often only in the context of distress that persistent PLEs were related to impairments.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The human toll of disasters extends beyond death, injury and loss. Post-traumatic stress (PTS) can be common among directly exposed individuals, and children are particularly vulnerable. Even children far removed from harm’s way report PTS, and media-based exposure may partially account for this phenomenon. In this study, we examine this issue using data from nearly 400 9- to 11-year-old children collected before and after Hurricane Irma, evaluating whether pre-existing neural patterns moderate associations between hurricane experiences and later PTS. The ‘dose’ of both self-reported objective exposure and media exposure predicted PTS, the latter even among children far from the hurricane. Furthermore, neural responses in brain regions associated with anxiety and stress conferred particular vulnerability. For example, heightened amygdala reactivity to fearful stimuli moderated the association between self-reported media exposure and PTS. Collectively, these findings show that for some youth with measurable vulnerability, consuming extensive disaster-related media may offer an alternative pathway to disaster exposure that transcends geography and objective risk.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The functional significance and mechanisms determining the development and individual variability of structural brain asymmetry remain unclear. Here, we systematically analyzed all relevant components of the most prominent structural asymmetry, brain torque (BT), and their relationships with potential genetic and nongenetic modifiers in a sample comprising 24,112 individuals from six cohorts.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Convergent research identifies a general factor (“P factor”) that confers transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology. Large-scale networks are key organizational units of the human brain. However, studies of altered network connectivity patterns associated with the P factor are limited, especially in early adolescence when most mental disorders are first emerging. We studied 11,875 9- and 10-year olds from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, of whom 6593 had high-quality resting-state scans. Network contingency analysis was used to identify altered interconnections associated with the P factor among 16 large-scale networks. These connectivity changes were then further characterized with quadrant analysis that quantified the directionality of P factor effects in relation to neurotypical patterns of positive versus negative connectivity across connections. The results showed that the P factor was associated with altered connectivity across 28 network cells (i.e., sets of connections linking pairs of networks); p values < 0.05 FDR-corrected for multiple comparisons. Higher P factor scores were associated with hypoconnectivity within default network and hyperconnectivity between default network and multiple control networks. Among connections within these 28 significant cells, the P factor was predominantly associated with “attenuating” effects (67%; p < 0.0002), i.e., reduced connectivity at neurotypically positive connections and increased connectivity at neurotypically negative connections. These results demonstrate that the general factor of psychopathology produces attenuating changes across multiple networks including default network, involved in spontaneous responses, and control networks involved in cognitive control. Moreover, they clarify mechanisms of transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology and invite further research into developmental causes of distributed attenuated connectivity.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

General cognitive ability (GCA) is an individual difference dimension linked to important academic, occupational, and health-related outcomes and its development is strongly linked to differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Complex abilities of the human brain are realized through interconnections among distributed brain regions, but brain-wide connectivity patterns associated with GCA in youth, and the influence of SES on these connectivity patterns, are poorly understood. The present study examined functional connectomes from 5937 9- and 10-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) multi-site study. Using multivariate predictive modeling methods, we identified whole-brain functional connectivity patterns linked to GCA. In leave-one-site-out cross-validation, we found these connectivity patterns exhibited strong and statistically reliable generalization at 19 out of 19 held-out sites accounting for 18.0% of the variance in GCA scores (cross-validated partial η). GCA-related connections were remarkably dispersed across brain networks: across 120 sets of connections linking pairs of large-scale networks, significantly elevated GCA-related connectivity was found in 110 of them, and differences in levels of GCA-related connectivity across brain networks were notably modest. Consistent with prior work, socioeconomic status was a strong predictor of GCA in this sample, and we found that distributed GCA-related brain connectivity patterns significantly statistically mediated this relationship (mean proportion mediated: 15.6%, p < 2 × 10). These results demonstrate that socioeconomic status and GCA are related to broad and diffuse differences in functional connectivity architecture during early adolescence, potentially suggesting a mechanism through which socioeconomic status influences cognitive development.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Our brain is constantly shaped by our immediate environments, and while some effects are transient, some have long-term consequences. Therefore, it is critical to identify which environmental risks have evident and long-term impact on brain development. To expand our understanding of the environmental context of each child, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® incorporates the use of geospatial location data to capture a range of individual, neighborhood, and state level data based on the child’s residential location in order to elucidate the physical environmental contexts in which today’s youth are growing up. We review the major considerations and types of geocoded information incorporated by the Linked External Data Environmental (LED) workgroup to expand on the built and natural environmental constructs in the existing and future ABCD Study data releases. Understanding the environmental context of each youth furthers the consortium’s mission to understand factors that may influence individual differences in brain development, providing the opportunity to inform public policy and health organization guidelines for child and adolescent health.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This study tested the hypothesis that early life adversity (ELA) heightens psychopathology risk by concurrently altering pubertal and neurodevelopmental timing, and associated gene transcription signatures. Analyses focused on threat- (family conflict/neighbourhood crime) and deprivation-related ELAs (parental inattentiveness/unmet material needs), using longitudinal data from 1514 biologically unrelated youths in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Typical developmental changes in white matter microstructure corresponded to widespread BOLD signal variability (BOLD increases (linked to cell communication and biosynthesis genes) and region-specific task-related BOLD increases/decreases (linked to signal transduction, immune and external environmental response genes). Increasing resting-state (RS), but decreasing task-related BOLD predicted normative functional network segregation. Family conflict was the strongest concurrent and prospective contributor to psychopathology, while material deprivation constituted an additive risk factor. ELA-linked psychopathology was predicted by higher Time 1 threat-evoked BOLD (associated with axonal development, myelination, cell differentiation and signal transduction genes), reduced Time 2 RS BOLD (associated with cell metabolism and attention genes) and greater Time 1 to Time 2 control/attention network segregation. Earlier pubertal timing and neurodevelopmental alterations independently mediated ELA effects on psychopathology. Our results underscore the differential roles of the immediate and wider external environment(s) in concurrent and longer-term ELA consequences.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This study investigated, in a large pediatric population, whether magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) evidence of mediobasal hypothalamic (MBH) gliosis is associated with baseline or change over 1 year in body adiposity.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The objective of this study was to examine the incidence of concussion and risk factors for sustaining concussion among children from the United States general population. This prospective cohort study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Children were recruited from schools across the US, sampled to reflect the sociodemographic variation of the US population. The current sample includes 11,013 children aged 9 to 10 years old (47.6% girls; 65.5% White) who were prospectively followed for an average of 1 year (mean = 367.9 days, SD = 40.8, range 249-601). The primary outcome was caregiver-reported concussion during a 1 year follow-up period. Logistic regression was used to determine which potential clinical, health history, and behavioral characteristics (assessed at baseline) were prospectively associated with concussion. In the 1 year follow-up period between ages 10 and 11, 1 in 100 children ( = 123, 1.1%) sustained a concussion. In univariate models, three baseline predictors (ADHD, prior concussion, and accident proneness) were significantly associated with sustaining a concussion. In a multivariate model, controlling for all other predictors, only prior concussion remained significantly associated with the occurrence of a concussion during the observation period (Odds Ratio = 5.49, 95% CI: 3.40-8.87). The most robust and only independent prospective predictor of sustaining a concussion was history of a prior concussion. History of concussion is associated with 5.5 times greater odds of sustaining concussion between ages 10 and 11 among children from the general US population.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate whether a history of depression or self-injurious thoughts and behaviors predict elevated body mass index (BMI) and elevated waist-to-height ratio in preadolescents.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study of 11,880 youth incorporates a comprehensive range of measures assessing predictors and outcomes related to mental health across childhood and adolescence in participating youth, as well as information about family mental health history. We have previously described the logic and content of the mental health assessment battery at Baseline and 1-year follow-up. Here, we describe changes to that battery and issues and clarifications that have emerged, as well as additions to the mental health battery at the 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year follow-ups. We capitalize on the recent release of longitudinal data for caregiver and youth report of mental health data to evaluate trajectories of dimensions of psychopathology as a function of demographic factors. For both caregiver and self-reported mental health symptoms, males showed age-related decreases in internalizing and externalizing symptoms, while females showed an increase in internalizing symptoms with age. Multiple indicators of socioeconomic status (caregiver education, family income, financial adversity, neighborhood poverty) accounted for unique variance in both caregiver and youth-reported externalizing and internalizing symptoms. These data highlight the importance of examining developmental trajectories of mental health as a function of key factors such as sex and socioeconomic environment.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Suicidal ideation and attempts (i.e., suicidality) are complex behaviors driven by environmental stress, genetic susceptibility, and their interaction. Preadolescent suicidality is a major health problem with rising rates, yet its underlying biology is understudied. Here we studied effects of genetic stress susceptibility, approximated by the polygenic risk score (PRS) for post-traumatic-stress-disorder (PTSD), on preadolescent suicidality in participants from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study®. We further evaluated PTSD-PRS effects on suicidality in the presence of environmental stressors that are established suicide risk factors. Analyses included both European and African ancestry participants using PRS calculated based on summary statistics from ancestry-specific genome-wide association studies. In European ancestry participants (N = 4,619, n = 378 suicidal), PTSD-PRS was associated with preadolescent suicidality (odds ratio [OR] = 1.12, 95%CI 1-1.25, p = 0.038). Results in African ancestry participants (N = 1,334, n = 130 suicidal) showed a similar direction but were not statistically significant (OR = 1.21, 95%CI 0.93-1.57, p = 0.153). Sensitivity analyses using non-psychiatric polygenic score for height and using cross-ancestry PTSD-PRS did not reveal any association with suicidality, supporting the specificity of the association of ancestry-specific PTSD-PRS with suicidality. Environmental stressors were robustly associated with suicidality across ancestries with moderate effect size for negative life events and family conflict (OR 1.27-1.6); and with large effect size (OR ∼ 4) for sexual-orientation discrimination. When combined with environmental factors, PTSD-PRS showed marginal additive effects in explaining variability in suicidality, with no evidence for G × E interaction. Results support use of cross-phenotype PRS, specifically stress-susceptibility, as a genetic marker for suicidality risk early in the lifespan.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Sleep is critical for cognitive health, especially during complex developmental periods such as adolescence. However, its effects on maturating brain networks that support cognitive function are only partially understood. We investigated the impact of shorter duration and reduced quality sleep, common stressors during development, on functional network properties in early adolescence-a period of significant neural maturation, using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging from 5566 children (median age = 120.0 months; 52.1% females) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development cohort. Decreased sleep duration, increased sleep latency, frequent waking up at night, and sleep-disordered breathing symptoms were associated with lower topological efficiency, flexibility, and robustness of visual, sensorimotor, attention, fronto-parietal control, default-mode and/or limbic networks, and with aberrant changes in the thalamus, basal ganglia, hippocampus, and cerebellum ( < 0.05). These widespread effects, many of which were body mass index-independent, suggest that unhealthy sleep in early adolescence may impair neural information processing and integration across incompletely developed networks, potentially leading to deficits in their cognitive correlates, including attention, reward, emotion processing and regulation, memory, and executive control. Shorter sleep duration, frequent snoring, difficulty waking up, and daytime sleepiness had additional detrimental network effects in nonwhite participants, indicating racial disparities in the influence of sleep metrics.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Disruptions in frontoparietal networks supporting emotion regulation have been long implicated in maladaptive childhood aggression. However, the association of connectivity between large-scale functional networks with aggressive behavior has not been tested. The present study examined whether the functional organization of the connectome predicts severity of aggression in children. This cross-sectional study included a transdiagnostic sample of 100 children with aggressive behavior (27 females) and 29 healthy controls without aggression or psychiatric disorders (13 females). Severity of aggression was indexed by the total score on the parent-rated Reactive-Proactive Aggression Questionnaire. During fMRI, participants completed a face emotion perception task of fearful and calm faces. Connectome-based predictive modeling with internal cross-validation was conducted to identify brain networks that predicted aggression severity. The replication and generalizability of the aggression predictive model was then tested in an independent sample of children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Connectivity predictive of aggression was identified within and between networks implicated in cognitive control (medial-frontal, frontoparietal), social functioning (default mode, salience), and emotion processing (subcortical, sensorimotor) (r = 0.31, RMSE = 9.05, p = 0.005). Out-of-sample replication (p < 0.002) and generalization (p = 0.007) of findings predicting aggression from the functional connectome was demonstrated in an independent sample of children from the ABCD study (n = 1791; n = 1701). Individual differences in large-scale functional networks contribute to variability in maladaptive aggression in children with psychiatric disorders. Linking these individual differences in the connectome to variation in behavioral phenotypes will advance identification of neural biomarkers of maladaptive childhood aggression to inform targeted treatments.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) for mental disorders have become a major player in child psychiatry research. PRSs quantify a child’s risk for childhood psychiatric disorders by summing the effects of a multitude of common risk genetic variants across the entire genome. Each genetic variant in isolation contributes a minuscule amount to the disorder, but their combined effect can be substantial. The study by Pat et al. illustrates how PRSs can be used as a starting point to examine the mechanisms that might link common genetic variant risk with symptoms. In their exploration of how genes, cognition, and psychopathology may be tied together, the authors apply meticulous analytic techniques to a rich, open dataset (the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development [ABCD] cohort) and report fascinating results.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Research has revealed broad cognitive deficits (e.g., memory, learning) in depression, and that motivation may account for this link. We tested the state (i.e., only present during depression), trait (i.e., underlying vulnerability) and scar (i.e., lasting corollary) hypotheses of cognitive dysfunction in depression. We additionally tested subjective motivation as a mediator of the concurrent depression-cognition link. In a longitudinal sample of 11,878 children ages 9-11, we found no evidence of a concurrent state or longitudinal trait or scar relationship between depression and cognition. The pattern of depression-cognition relationships-which precluded a mediator analysis-in our childhood sample is a departure from previous studies. Our findings indicate that cognitive deficits are not strongly associated with depression in childhood, in contrast with the impairment commonly seen in older individuals with depression.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Concerns abound regarding childhood smartphone use, but studies to date have largely relied on self-reported screen use. Self-reporting of screen use is known to be misreported by pediatric samples and their parents, limiting the accurate determination of the impact of screen use on social, emotional, and cognitive development. Thus, a more passive, objective measurement of smartphone screen use among children is needed.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Adversity exposure is a risk factor for psychopathology, which most frequently onsets during adolescence, and prior research has demonstrated that alterations in cortico-limbic connectivity may account in part for this association. In a sample of youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 4006), we tested a longitudinal structural equation model to examine the indirect effect of adversity exposure (negative life events) on later psychopathology via changes in cortico-limbic resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC). We also examined the potential protective effects of parental acceptance. Generally, cortico-limbic connectivity became more strongly negative between baseline and year 2 follow-up, suggesting that stronger negative correlations within these cortico-limbic networks may reflect a more mature phenotype. Exposure to a greater number of negative life events was associated with stronger negative cortico-limbic rsFC which, in turn, was associated with lower internalizing (but not externalizing) symptoms. The indirect effect of negative life events on internalizing symptoms via cortico-limbic rsFC was significant. Parental acceptance did not moderate the association between negative life events and rsFC. Our findings highlight how stressful childhood experiences may accelerate neurobiological maturation in specific cortico-limbic connections, potentially reflecting an adaptive process that protects against internalizing problems in the context of adversity.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Advances in our understanding of risk and resilience factors in adolescent brain health and development increasingly demand a broad set of assessment tools that consider a youth’s peer, family, school, neighborhood, and cultural contexts in addition to neurobiological, genetic, and biomedical information. The Culture and Environment (CE) Workgroup (WG) of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study curates these important components of the protocol throughout ten years of planned data collection. In this report, the CE WG presents an update on the evolution of the ABCD Study® CE protocol since study inception (Zucker et al., 2018), as well as emerging findings that include CE measures. Background and measurement characteristics of instruments present in the study since baseline have already been described in our 2018 report, and therefore are only briefly described here. New measures introduced since baseline are described in more detail. Descriptive statistics on all measures are presented based on a total sample of 11,000+ youth and their caregivers assessed at baseline and the following two years. Psychometric properties of the measures, including longitudinal aspects of the data, are reported, along with considerations for future measurement waves. The CE WG ABCD® components are an essential part of the overall protocol that permits characterization of the unique cultural and social environment within which each developing brain is transactionally embedded.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

To investigate the relation between parental age, and behavioral, cognitive and brain differences in the children.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI

Abstract

Lead, a toxic metal, affects cognitive development at the lowest measurable concentrations found in children, but little is known about its direct impact on brain development. Recently, we reported widespread decreases in cortical surface area and volume with increased risks of lead exposure, primarily in children of low-income families.

Journal

Published

Authors

Keywords

DOI