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Pubertal development mediates the association between family environment and brain structure and function in childhood.

ABSTRACT: Psychosocial acceleration theory suggests that pubertal maturation is accelerated in response to adversity. In addition, suboptimal caregiving accelerates development of the amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuit. These findings may be related. Here, we assess whether associations between family environment and measures of the amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuit are mediated by pubertal development in more than 2000 9- and 10-year-old children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (http://dx.doi.org/10.15154/1412097). Using structural equation modeling, demographic, child-reported, and parent-reported data on family dynamics were compiled into a higher level family environment latent variable. Magnetic resonance imaging preprocessing and compilations were performed by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study's data analysis core. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) thickness, area, white matter fractional anisotropy, amygdala volume, and cingulo-opercular network-amygdala resting-state functional connectivity were assessed. For ACC cortical thickness and ACC fractional anisotropy, significant indirect effects indicated that a stressful family environment relates to more advanced pubertal stage and more mature brain structure. For cingulo-opercular network-amygdala functional connectivity, results indicated a trend in the expected direction. For ACC area, evidence for quadratic mediation by pubertal stage was found. Sex-stratified analyses suggest stronger results for girls. Despite small effect sizes, structural measures of circuits important for emotional behavior are associated with family environment and show initial evidence of accelerated pubertal development.

SUBMITTER: Thijssen S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7525116 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Pubertal development mediates the association between family environment and brain structure and function in childhood.

Thijssen Sandra S Collins Paul F PF Luciana Monica M

Development and psychopathology 20200501 2

Psychosocial acceleration theory suggests that pubertal maturation is accelerated in response to adversity. In addition, suboptimal caregiving accelerates development of the amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuit. These findings may be related. Here, we assess whether associations between family environment and measures of the amygdala-medial prefrontal cortex circuit are mediated by pubertal development in more than 2000 9- and 10-year-old children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Develop ...[more]

PMID: 31258099

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Project description:Growing up in a bilingual environment is becoming increasingly common. Yet, we know little about how this enriched language environment influences the connectivity of children's brains. Behavioural research in children and adults has shown that bilingualism experience may boost executive control (EC) skills, such as inhibitory control and attention. Moreover, increased structural and functional (resting-state) connectivity in language-related and EC-related brain networks is associated with increased executive control in bilingual adults. However, how bilingualism factors alter brain connectivity early in brain development remains poorly understood. We will combine standardised tests of attention with structural and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in bilingual children. This study will allow us to address an important field of inquiry within linguistics and developmental cognitive neuroscience by examining the following questions: Does bilingual experience modulate connectivity in language-related and EC-related networks in children? Do differences in resting-state brain connectivity correlate with differences in EC skills (specifically attention skills)? How do bilingualism-related factors, such as age of exposure to two languages, language usage and proficiency, modulate brain connectivity? We will collect structural and functional MRI, and quantitative measures of EC and language skills from two groups of English-Greek bilingual children - 20 simultaneous bilinguals (exposure to both languages from birth) and 20 successive bilinguals (exposure to English between the ages of 3 and 5 years) - and 20 English monolingual children, 8-10 years old. We will compare connectivity measures and attention skills between monolinguals and bilinguals to examine the effects of bilingual exposure. We will also examine to what extent bilingualism factors predict brain connectivity in EC and language networks. Overall, we hypothesize that connectivity and EC will be enhanced in bilingual children compared to monolingual children, and each outcome will be modulated by age of exposure to two languages and by bilingual language usage.

Dataset Information

Pubertal development mediates the association between family environment and brain structure and function in childhood.

Publications

Pubertal development mediates the association between family environment and brain structure and function in childhood.

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