Early Pubertal Timing Mediates the Association between Low Socioeconomic Status and Poor Attention and Executive Functioning in a Diverse Community Sample of Adolescents.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Stumper A
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7302968 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundUndergoing puberty ahead of peers ('earlier pubertal timing') is an important risk factor for mental health problems during early adolescence. The current study examined pathways between pubertal timing and mental health via connectivity of neural systems implicated in emotional reactivity and regulation (specifically corticolimbic connections) in 9- to 14-year-olds.MethodResearch questions were examined in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large population representative sample in the United States. Linear mixed models examined associations between pubertal timing and resting-state corticolimbic connectivity. Significant connections were examined as potential mediators of the relationship between pubertal timing and mental health (withdrawn depressed and rule-breaking) problems. Exploratory analyses interrogated whether the family environment moderated neural risk patterns in those undergoing puberty earlier than their peers.ResultsEarlier pubertal timing was related to decreased connectivity between limbic structures (bilateral amygdala and right hippocampus) and the cingulo-opercular network, left amygdala and somatomotor (mouth) network, as well as between the left hippocampus and ventral attention network and visual network. Corticolimbic connections also mediated the relationship between earlier pubertal timing and increased withdrawn depressed problems (but not rule-breaking problems). Finally, parental acceptance buffered against connectivity patterns that were implicated in withdrawn depressed problems in those undergoing puberty earlier than their peers.ConclusionFindings highlight the role of decreased corticolimbic connectivity in mediating pathways between earlier pubertal timing and withdrawn depressed problems, and we present preliminary evidence that the family environment may buffer against these neural risk patterns during early adolescence.
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Project description:Emotions often result from fluctuating experiences with self-regulation unfolding over time. However, most research has been focused on neural responses to static, affective stimuli. We studied emotion transitions, which correspond to dynamic conditions of varying affective valence or intensities. Functional coupling of prefrontal and posterior cortex (EEG coherence) was recorded during exposure to stable versus changing emotion-eliciting images (static vs. dynamic conditions). Prefrontal-posterior coupling was decreased in the dynamic conditions compared to the static conditions. A decrease in prefrontal-posterior coupling implies less control of the prefrontal cortex over perceptual information, which may allow the brain to become more affected by emotional fluctuations. We also assessed the aftereffect of EEG coherence on executive functioning, utilizing the flanker task. Among individuals reporting higher chronic stress, executive functioning decreased after dynamic conditions. This decrease in executive functioning was mediated by the decrease in prefrontal-posterior coupling in the dynamic conditions. These findings suggest that the strength of prefrontal-posterior coupling is not only related to emotional transitions but also to executive functioning. The deterioration of executive functioning after dynamic emotional processing may reflect the additional cognitive effort required to process dynamic shifts in affective stimuli, and this relationship is exacerbated by chronic stress.
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Project description:Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is related to disparities in the development of both language and executive functioning (EF) skills. Emerging evidence suggests that language development may precede and provide necessary scaffolding for EF development in early childhood. The present preregistered study investigates how these skills co-develop longitudinally in early childhood and whether language development explains the relationship between SES and EF development. A socioeconomically diverse sample of 305 children completed repeated assessments of language (sentence comprehension) and EF (cognitive flexibility, behavioral inhibition, and cognitive inhibition) at four waves spaced 9 months apart from ages 3 to 5 years. Bivariate latent curve models with structured residuals were estimated to disaggregate between-person and within-person components of stability and change. Results revealed bidirectional relationships between language and EF across all waves. However, at 3 years, language comprehension more strongly predicted EF than the reverse; yet by 5 years, the bidirectional effects across domains did not significantly differ. Children from higher-SES backgrounds exhibited higher initial language and EF skills than children from lower-SES families, though SES was not associated with either rate of growth. Finally, early language-mediated the association between SES and early EF skills, and this model outperformed a reverse direction mediation. Together, results suggest that EF development is driven by early language development, and that SES disparities in EF are explained, at least in part, by early differences in language comprehension. These findings have implications for early interventions to support children's language skills as a potential pathway to improving early EF development.
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Project description:Puberty is regulated by epigenetic mechanisms and is highly sensitive to metabolic and nutritional cues. However, the epigenetic pathways mediating the effects of nutrition and obesity on pubertal timing are unknown. Here, we identify Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), a fuel-sensing deacetylase, as a molecule that restrains female puberty via epigenetic repression of the puberty-activating gene, Kiss1. SIRT1 is expressed in hypothalamic Kiss1 neurons and suppresses Kiss1 expression. SIRT1 interacts with the Polycomb silencing complex to decrease Kiss1 promoter activity. As puberty approaches, SIRT1 is evicted from the Kiss1 promoter facilitating a repressive-to-permissive switch in chromatin landscape. Early-onset overnutrition accelerates these changes, enhances Kiss1 expression and advances puberty. In contrast, undernutrition raises SIRT1 levels, protracts Kiss1 repression and delays puberty. This delay is mimicked by central pharmacological activation of SIRT1 or SIRT1 overexpression, achieved via transgenesis or virogenetic targeting to the ARC. Our results identify SIRT1-mediated inhibition of Kiss1 as key epigenetic mechanism by which nutritional cues and obesity influence mammalian puberty.
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Project description:The human cerebral cortex undergoes considerable changes during development, with cortical maturation patterns reflecting regional heterogeneity that generally progresses in a posterior-to-anterior fashion. However, the organizing principles that govern cortical development remain unclear. In the current study, we characterized age-related differences in cortical thickness (CT) as a function of sex, pubertal timing, and two dissociable indices of socioeconomic status (i.e., income-to-needs and maternal education) in the context of functional brain network organization, using a cross-sectional sample (n = 789) diverse in race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status from the Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Development (HCP-D). We found that CT generally followed a linear decline from 5 to 21 years of age, except for three functional networks that displayed nonlinear trajectories. We found no main effect of sex or age by sex interaction for any network. Earlier pubertal timing was associated with reduced mean CT and CT in seven networks. We also found a significant age by maternal education interaction for mean CT across cortex and CT in the dorsal attention network, where higher levels of maternal education were associated with steeper age-related decreases in CT. Taken together, our results suggest that these biological and environmental variations may impact the emerging functional connectome.
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Project description:We examined the relationship between white matter microstructure in schizophrenia using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and cognitive improvements induced by 70h (~16weeks) of cognitive training. We measured anatomical connectivity in 48 patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and 28 healthy control participants (HC) at baseline, and then examined the relationship between anatomical connectivity at baseline and training-induced cognitive gains in 30 SZ who performed diffusion imaging after completing 70h of training. Compared with healthy control participants, individuals with schizophrenia showed reduced white matter integrity at baseline, as indexed by fractional anisotropy metrics, in bilateral posterior corona radiata, bilateral retrolenticular internal capsules, bilateral posterior thalamic radiation, left anterior corona radiata, left superior longitudinal fasciculus, left sagittal stratum, right cerebral peduncle and the genu and splenium of the corpus callosum. After training, schizophrenia participants showed significant gains in attention/vigilance, speed of processing, verbal learning, visual learning and executive functioning. White matter integrity within the right fronto-occipital fasciculus predicted training-induced improvements in attention/vigilance, while white matter integrity within the right corticospinal tract and bilateral medial lemnisci predicted cognitive training-induced improvements in executive functioning, areas that did not show white matter tract deficits at baseline. These findings suggest that preserved white matter integrity connecting long-range prefrontal-thalamic-sensorimotor areas may be an important determinant for training-induced neurocognitive plasticity.
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Project description:Brain development is exquisitely sensitive to psychosocial experiences, with implications for neurodevelopmental trajectories, for better or worse. The premise of this investigation was that the level of responsibility in adolescence may relate to brain structure and higher-order cognitive functions. In a sample of 108 adolescents, we focused on cortical thickness (using FreeSurfer) as an indicator of neurodevelopment in regions previously implicated in executive functioning (EF) and examined performance on an EF task outside of the scanner, in the context of level of responsibility. We further investigated whether socioeconomic status (SES) and family stress moderated the relationship between responsibility and brain structure or EF. Findings revealed that greater responsibility was related to thinner left precuneus and right middle frontal cortex. In lower SES adolescents, greater responsibility predicted thinner left precuneus and right middle frontal cortex, which have been consistently implicated in EF. Higher SES adolescents did not show structural differences related to responsibility, however, they did exhibit better EF performance. It may be that circumstances surrounding the need for greater responsibility in lower SES households are detrimental to neurodevelopment compared to higher SES households. Alternatively, responsibility may act as a protective factor that bolsters cortical thinning in regions related to EF.
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Project description:Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with greater risk for symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). One mechanism through which SES may confer risk for ADHD is by influencing brain structure. Alterations to cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume have been associated with low SES and with the presence of ADHD across multiple studies. The current study examined whether cortical thickness, surface area or subcortical volume mediate the associations between SES and ADHD in youth 3-21 years old (N = 874) from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics Study. Freesurfer was used to estimate cortical thickness, surface area and subcortical volume from structural magnetic resonance imaging. Parents reported on demographics, family SES, ADHD diagnoses and the presence of child attention problems. Statistical mediation was assessed using a bootstrap resampling procedure. Controlling for parental ADHD, child age, gender, birth weight and scanner, children in low SES families were more likely to be in the ADHD group. Consistent with previous reports in this sample, low SES was associated with reduced surface area across the frontal lobe and reduced subcortical volume in the amygdala, cerebellum, hippocampus and basal ganglia. Of these regions, a significant indirect effect of SES on ADHD status through subcortical volume was observed for the left cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.004, 0.022), the right cerebellum (95% confidence interval: 0.006, 0.025), and the right caudate (95% confidence interval: 0.002, 0.022). Environmentally mediated changes in the cerebellum and the caudate may be neurodevelopmental mechanisms explaining elevated risk of ADHD in children in low SES families.
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Project description:Deficits in executive control functions are some of the most common and disabling consequences of both military and civilian brain injury. However, effective interventions are scant. The goal of this study was to assess whether cognitive rehabilitation training that was successfully applied in chronic civilian brain injury would be effective for military veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI). In a prior study, participants with chronic acquired brain injury significantly improved after training in Goal-Oriented Attentional Self-Regulation (GOALS) on measures of attention/executive function, functional task performance, and goal-directed control over neural processing on functional magnetic resonance imaging. The objective of this study was to assess effects of GOALS training in veterans with chronic TBI. A total of 33 veterans with chronic TBI and executive difficulties in their daily life completed either 5 weeks of manualized GOALS training or Brain-Health Education (BHE) matched by time and intensity. Evaluator-blinded assessments at baseline and post-training included neuropsychological and complex functional task performance and self-report measures of emotional regulation. After GOALS, but not BHE training, participants significantly improved from baseline on primary outcome measures of Overall Complex Attention/Executive Function composite neuropsychological performance score (F = 7.10, p = 0.01; partial η2 = 0.19), and on overall complex functional task performance (Goal Processing Scale Overall Performance; F = 6.92, p = 0.01, partial η2 = 0.20). Additionally, post-GOALS participants indicated significant improvement on emotional regulation self-report measures (Profile of Mood States Confusion Score; F = 6.05, p = 0.02, partialη2 = 0.20). Training in attentional self-regulation applied to participant-defined goals may improve cognitive functioning in veterans with chronic TBI. Attention regulation training may not only impact executive control functioning in real-world complex tasks, but also may improve emotional regulation and functioning. Implications for treatment of veterans with TBI are discussed.
| S-EPMC8104023 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study examines pre-pregnancy Body Mass Index (BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) in relation to early childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms and related executive self-regulation behaviors. The analyses sample (n = 331) included a subsample of participants from a birth cohort recruited from prenatal clinics and hospital facilities from April 2005 to June 2011 in Durham, North Carolina. Pre-pregnancy BMI was calculated from weight at the last menstrual period and height was extracted from medical records. Gestational weight gain was calculated from pre-pregnancy weight and weight measured at the time of delivery. ADHD symptoms and executive self-regulation behaviors were assessed by maternal report (mean age = 3 years). Multivariable regression methods with inverse probability weighting (IPW) were used to evaluate associations accounting for sample selection bias and confounding. Pre-pregnancy BMI at levels ≥35 was positively associated with higher ADHD symptoms and worse executive self-regulation behaviors (inhibitory control and attention). Compared to adequate GWG, less than adequate GWG was related to more ADHD hyperactive-impulsive symptoms, whereas greater than adequate GWG was related to more problematic behaviors related to working memory and planning. The findings support a link between maternal weight and child neurodevelopment. Continued research that help identify biological mechanisms are needed.
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