Socioeconomic resources in youth are linked to divergent patterns of network integration and segregation across the brain’s transmodal axis

Abstract

Socioeconomic resources (SER) calibrate the developing brain to the current context, which can confer or attenuate risk for psychopathology across the lifespan. Recent multivariate work indicates that SER levels powerfully influence intrinsic functional connectivity patterns across the entire brain. Nevertheless, the neurobiological meaning of these widespread alterations remains poorly understood, despite its translational promise for early risk identification, targeted intervention, and policy reform. In the present study, we leverage the resources of graph theory to precisely characterize multivariate and univariate associations between household SER and the functional integration and segregation (i.e., participation coefficient, within-module degree) of brain regions across major cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor systems during the resting state in 5,821 youth (ages 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. First, we establish that decomposing the brain into profiles of integration and segregation captures more than half of the multivariate association between SER and functional connectivity with greater parsimony (100-fold reduction in number of features) and interpretability. Second, we show that the topological effects of SER are not uniform across the brain; rather, higher SER levels are related to greater integration of somatomotor and subcortical systems, but greater segregation of default mode, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar systems. Finally, we demonstrate that the effects of SER are spatially patterned along the unimodal-transmodal gradient of brain organization. These findings provide critical interpretive context for the established and widespread effects of SER on brain organization, indicating that SER levels differentially configure the intrinsic functional architecture of developing unimodal and transmodal systems. This study highlights both sensorimotor and higher-order networks that may serve as neural markers of environmental stress and opportunity, and which may guide efforts to scaffold healthy neurobehavioral development among disadvantaged communities of youth.

Functional brain connectivity predictors of prospective substance use initiation and their environmental correlates

“…Our findings are also consistent with findings highlighting the importance of somato-motor and subcortical networks for predicting alcohol problems in adolescence [71] and the prior finding [68] that reduced connectivity between cognitive control and subcortical networks is associated with adolescent substance use. While our finding that SUI was strongly predicted by connectivity of the somato-motor network may initially seem surprising, it accords with recent data emphasizing that this network is particularly sensitive to variation in household socioeconomic resources in the ABCD Study [73] and is implicated in impulsivity, cognitive functioning, and transdiagnostic psychopathology in adults [74].…”

A sensorimotor-association axis of thalamocortical connection development

“…Ample prior work has documented strong associations between socioeconomic features of the environment and cortical properties during youth. During infancy 36 , childhood 45 , and adolescence 2 , across-cortex variation in environment associations has been found to be systematically patterned along the S-A axis. In a series of analyses, we aimed to ascertain whether a similar principle governs interactions between youths' environmental exposures and thalamocortical structural connectivity.…”