Sex differences in associations of socioemotional dispositions measured in childhood and adolescence with brain white matter microstructure 12 years later

Abstract

Predictive associations were estimated between socioemotional dispositions measured at 10–17 years using the Child and Adolescent Dispositions Scale (CADS) and future individual differences in white matter microstructure measured at 22–31 years of age. Participants were 410 twins (48.3% monozygotic) selected for later neuroimaging by oversampling on risk for psychopathology from a representative sample of child and adolescent twins. Controlling for demographic covariates and total intracranial volume (TICV), each CADS disposition (negative emotionality, prosociality, and daring) rated by one of the informants (parent or youth) significantly predicted global fractional anisotropy (FA) averaged across the major white matter tracts in brain in adulthood, but did so through significant interactions with sex after false discovery rate (FDR) correction. In females, each 1 SD difference in greater parent-rated prosociality was associated with 0.43 SD greater FA (p < 0.0008). In males, each 1 SD difference in greater parent-rated daring was associated with 0.24 SD lower FA (p < 0.0008), and each 1 SD difference in greater youth-rated negative emotionality was associated with 0.18 SD greater average FA (p < 0.0040). These findings suggest that CADS dispositions are associated with FA, but associations differ by sex. Exploratory analyses suggest that FA may mediate the associations between dispositions and psychopathology in some cases. These associations over 12 years could reflect enduring brain–behavior associations in spite of transactions with the environment, but could equally reflect processes in which dispositional differences in behavior influence the development of white matter. Future longitudinal studies are needed to resolve the causal nature of these sex-moderated associations.

Only females show a stable association between neuroticism and microstructural asymmetry of the cingulum across childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal DTI study

“…However, a recent study investigating associations between negative emotionality, assessed with the Child and Adolescent Dispositions Scale (CADS) at age 10-17 years, and cingulum FA asymmetry assessed 10-15 years later in a large cohort (n = 410), did not find any significant associations (Lahey et al, 2020). Inconsistencies between our and Lahey's findings may in part be due to differences in personality questionnaires used, as the negative emotionality trait estimated with CADS exhibits only moderate correlations with neuroticism as well as weak, but significant correlations with conscientiousness and agreeableness (Lahey et al, 2020;Lahey et al, 2010).…”

Connecting quantitatively derived personality–psychopathology models and neuroscience

“…The articles included in this special issue offer excellent examples of research on the interrelations between neural systems and quantitative, dimensional models of personality-psychopathology. Empirical studies in this issue used a variety of neuroscientific methodologies, spanning functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; Hyatt et al, 2020;Neumann, 2020;Sun et al, 2020;Weiss et al, 2021), electrophysiology (event-related potentials [ERPs]; Palumbo et al, 2020;Suzuki, Novak, Ait Oumeziane, Foti, & Samuel, 2020), positron emission tomography (PET; Gerritsen et al, 2020), and structural neuroimaging (Lahey et al, 2020). A number of quantitative methodologies were also employed, including structural equation modeling (SEM; e.g., Neumann, 2020) and "psychoneurometric" operationalizations (e.g., Palumbo et al, 2020).…”

“…Structural MRI also emerged as a powerful tool for studying connections between brain and personality-psychopathology indicators. Lahey et al (2020) investigated the association between three dispositional traits in adolescence and white matter microstructure in young adulthood in a twin sample enriched for psychopathology (n = 410). Dispositional traits showed sexspecific associations with subsequent functional anisotropy (FA) across major white matter tracts, such that greater FA was predicted by greater prosociality in females, but by greater negative emotionality and lower daring in males.…”

“…A solution to this problem is to enrich general population samples through recruiting strategies that target the psychopathology of interest, rather than to fall back on purely clinical samples (DeYoung & Krueger, 2020;. Examples of this approach are studies by Lahey et al (2020) and Suzuki et al (2020) in this issue. This approach is likely more advantageous for studies of the genetic, neural, and cognitive/affective mechanisms of clinical phenomena than the "transdiagnostic" sampling approach (i.e., mixed patient populations) often recommended by RDoC (Insel et al, 2010).…”

“…Finally, the vast majority of studies in the literature, as well as the majority of articles in this special issue (see Lahey et al, 2020, for an exception), are cross-sectional in nature. There is thus a clear need for studies using large longitudinal samples to explicitly consider development.…”