Brain structure is linked to the association between family environment and behavioral problems in children in the ABCD study

Abstract

Children’s behavioral problems have been associated with their family environments. Here, we investigate whether specific features of brain structures could relate to this link. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging of 8756 children aged 9-11 from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Developmental study, we show that high family conflict and low parental monitoring scores are associated with children’s behavioral problems, as well as with smaller cortical areas of the orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and middle temporal gyrus. A longitudinal analysis indicates that psychiatric problems scores are associated with increased family conflict and decreased parental monitoring 1 year later, and mediate associations between the reduced cortical areas and family conflict, and parental monitoring scores. These results emphasize the relationships between the brain structure of children, their family environments, and their behavioral problems.

Atypical Child-Parent Neural Synchrony Links to Children’s Psychopathological Symptoms

“…Behaviorally, children in negative family environments experienced more severe psychopathological symptoms. This is in line with previous findings showing positive associations between family risk factors (e.g., maternal maltreatment, family conflicts) and children’s internalizing symptoms (Cummings et al, 2013; Gong et al, 2021; Schleider and Weisz, 2017). According to social learning and bio-behavioral synchrony models (Feldman, 2020, 2017; Justyna, 2017), child-parent shared experiences are indispensable for children to learn and develop emotional skills through socialization from their parents in daily life.…”

“…Children who experienced maladaptive family interaction with parents are prone to develop poor mental health later in life (Feldman, 2007; Quinones-Camacho et al, 2019). Recently, several studies investigated the association between family risk factors (i.e., family conflicts and childhood maltreatment) and children’s brain structure and function using single-brain paradigms in which either the parent or child is examined (Gong et al, 2021; Noble et al, 2015; Teicher et al, 2016). Little, however, is known about how negative family environment affects children’s psychological wellbeing through altered reciprocal responses across child-parent brain dyads.…”

Brain functional connectivities that mediate the association between childhood traumatic events, and adult mental health and cognition

“…To perform this analysis, a mean value across all functional connectivities that were significantly correlated with childhood traumatic events was calculated. This is a useful single construct, for a very similar set of brain regions are associated with the mental health and cognitive problems associated with prolonged nausea and vomiting of the mother in pregnancy, 45 with conflict in the family environment, 46 and with a young age of the mother. 47 This SEM model was implemented with childhood traumatic events, mental health, cognitive measures, and the mean Functional Connectivity value in one regression model.…”

The Exposome and its Associations with Broad Mental and Physical Health Measures in Early Adolescence

“…ABCD Study protocol collected data on environment at multiple levels of exposure including household, family, school, neighborhood, and state-level 29 . Several hypothesis-driven studies have examined specific ABCD exposures’ effects on brain and behavior outcomes (e.g., trauma 30 , neighborhood poverty 31 , air pollution 32 , prenatal cannabis exposure 33 , screen time 34 , family factors 35 ). In the current work, we employed an exposome framework approach that systematically investigates multiple environmental exposures.…”

“…ABCD Study protocol collected data on environment at multiple levels of exposure including household, family, school, neighborhood, and state 19 . Given several hypothesis-driven studies that have examined specific ABCD exposures' effects on brain and behavior outcomes (e.g., trauma 20 , neighborhood poverty 21 , air pollution 22 , prenatal cannabis exposure 23 , screen time 24 , family factors 25 ), there is a need for a holistic approach that can leverage the data to generate measures that will capture the exposome comprehensively, test its relationship with mental and general health measures, and facilitate integration of exposome measures in studies of human development.…”