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School climate is associated with cortical thickness and executive function in children and adolescents.

ABSTRACT: A positive school climate has been found to support mental and physical health, academic achievement and social adjustment among youth. However, links between school climate and brain structure have not been investigated to date. In this study, we investigated whether school climate was associated with executive function (EF) and brain structure (cortical thickness and surface area) in children and adolescents. We further examined whether these links varied as a function of socioeconomic background. Participants who ranged from 9 to 18 years of age (N = 108) completed EF tasks and a high-resolution, 3-Tesla, T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. Overall school climate, academic support, and family socioeconomic background were assessed using questionnaires. Higher academic support was associated with greater EF task performance and increased global cortical thickness. Additionally, academic support moderated the association between family income and EF, such that children from lower income families performed similarly to their more advantaged peers on EF tasks in the context of positive academic support. This work is the first to link school climate to brain structure and contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting that academic support may be an important protective factor in the context of socioeconomic disadvantage.

SUBMITTER: Piccolo LR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6294656 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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School climate is associated with cortical thickness and executive function in children and adolescents.

Piccolo Luciane R LR Merz Emily C EC Noble Kimberly G KG

Developmental science 20180829 1

A positive school climate has been found to support mental and physical health, academic achievement and social adjustment among youth. However, links between school climate and brain structure have not been investigated to date. In this study, we investigated whether school climate was associated with executive function (EF) and brain structure (cortical thickness and surface area) in children and adolescents. We further examined whether these links varied as a function of socioeconomic backgro ...[more]

PMID: 30156357

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Project description:Importance:A total of 25.7 million children in the United States are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity is associated with deficits in executive function, which may contribute to poor dietary decision-making. Less is known about the associations between being overweight or obese and brain development. Objective:To examine whether body mass index (BMI) is associated with thickness of the cerebral cortex and whether cortical thickness mediates the association between BMI and executive function in children. Design, Setting, and Participants:In this cross-sectional study, cortical thickness maps were derived from T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance images of a large, diverse sample of 9 and 10-year-old children from 21 US sites. List sorting, flanker, matrix reasoning, and Wisconsin card sorting tasks were used to assess executive function. Main Outcomes and Measures:A 10-fold nested cross-validation general linear model was used to assess mean cortical thickness from BMI across cortical brain regions. Associations between BMI and executive function were explored with Pearson partial correlations. Mediation analysis examined whether mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and executive function. Results:Among 3190 individuals (mean [SD] age, 10.0 [0.61] years; 1627 [51.0%] male), those with higher BMI exhibited lower cortical thickness. Eighteen cortical regions were significantly inversely associated with BMI. The greatest correlations were observed in the prefrontal cortex. The BMI was inversely correlated with dimensional card sorting (r?=?-0.088, P?<?.001), list sorting (r?=?-0.061, P?<?.003), and matrix reasoning (r?=?-0.095, P?<?.001) but not the flanker task. Mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and list sorting (mean [SE] indirect effect, 0.014 [0.008]; 95%?CI, 0.001-0.031) but not the matrix reasoning or card sorting task. Conclusions and Relevance:These results suggest that BMI is associated with prefrontal cortex development and diminished executive functions, such as working memory.

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Dataset Information

School climate is associated with cortical thickness and executive function in children and adolescents.

Publications

School climate is associated with cortical thickness and executive function in children and adolescents.

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