Poster No:
675
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Hajer Nakua1, Lee Propp1, Anne-Claude Bedard1, Marcos Sanches2, Stephanie Ameis3, Brendan Andrade2
Institutions:
1University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, 2Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto , Ontario, 3Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Lee Propp
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Marcos Sanches
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Toronto , Ontario
Introduction:
Elevated externalizing behaviours in childhood predict development of various mental health disorders in adolescence (Copeland et al., 2009). Typically, children exhibiting elevated externalizing symptoms also show emotion dysregulation and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. These three dimensions may confer to varying risk trajectories of developing an externalizing disorder. Understanding whether these dimensions feature shared or distinct neurobiological correlates can complement the exploration of risk trajectories by providing insight on brain-based predictors of clinical and treatment outcomes. Here, we examined whether baseline brain structure in frontolimbic/striatal regions would be related to externalizing symptoms, emotion dysregulation, and CU traits in a population-based sample. We then determined whether brain structure of these regions would be predictive of improved conduct problems following a 15-week psychosocial treatment intervention in a separate pilot sample of children with externalizing disorders.
Methods:
We fit separate linear mixed-effect models in two datasets to examine the relationship between baseline brain structure (parcellated from the Desikan-Killiany Atlas; Desikan et al., 2006) and externalizing psychopathology dimensions over time. Using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (n=10,534,ages=9-11;Casey et al., 2018), we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between frontolimbic/striatal structures and externalizing symptoms, emotion dysregulation, and/or CU traits using various clinical measures to index these dimensions. Fixed effect covariates included sex, age, medication status, and household income. Random effects included family ID (for multiple siblings enrolled), site, and participant ID (for longitudinal models). Then, in a pilot sample of children with externalizing disorders(n=17,ages=9-12), we examined whether pre-treatment brain structure of frontal regions identified in ABCD were linked to reductions in conduct problems (derived from Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; SDQ) following psychosocial treatment. Fixed effect covariates included time, emotion dysregulation, ROI thickness, the interaction between these three variables, as well as conduct problems. Random effects included participant IDs. We corrected for multiple comparisons across analyses.
Results:
In ABCD, higher baseline CU traits were significantly associated with increased baseline cortical thickness in the right rostral middle frontal gyrus (B=0.027,p=0.03) and the left and right pars orbitalis (left:B=0.033,pcor=0.009;right:B=0.027,p=0.03). Greater baseline emotion dysregulation was significantly associated with baseline lower subcortical volume in the left caudate (B=-0.026,p=0.02), right amygdala (B=-0.027,p=0.02), left and right nucleus accumbens (left:B=-0.024, p=0.02;right:B=-0.037,p<0.001). Lower baseline cortical thickness in the left pars triangularis (F(2, 20576)=6.94,p=0.014) and left rostral middle frontal gyrus (F(2, 20619)=6.33,p=0.014) moderated the trajectory of externalizing symptoms over time. In the pilot study, greater thickness in the left insula and right rostral anterior cingulate cortex was associated with reduced conduct problems following treatment (B=1.01-3.88,p<0.01).
Conclusions:
Our first analysis revealed that while the frontolimbic/striatal networks are implicated in externalizing psychopathology across a pediatric population-based sample, each dimension and the time-point being measured may influence the pattern and trajectory of brain-behaviour relationships found. Our second analysis revealed that frontal cortical regions may be predictive of treatment outcome in children with externalizing disorders. Although the two analyses identified different regions within the frontal cortical network, the overall results of this study shows that regions in this network may be implicated in externalizing psychopathology across different pediatric samples.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotion and Motivation Other
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Univariate Modeling
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
Anatomical MRI 2
Keywords:
Affective Disorders
Data analysis
Emotions
MRI
Pediatric Disorders
Psychiatric Disorders
STRUCTURAL MRI
Univariate
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Casey BJ. (2018). The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study: Imaging acquisition across 21 sites. Dev Cogn Neurosci, 32:43-54.
Copeland WE. (2009). Childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders as predictors of young adult disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 66(7):764-772.
Desikan RS. (2006). An automated labeling system for subdividing the human cerebral cortex on MRI scans into gyral based regions of interest. Neuroimage, 31(3):968-980.