Associations Between Brain Connectivity and Psychiatric Symptoms in Children: Insights into Adolescent Mental Health

Childhood and adolescence is a critical period for neurocognitive development, during which many psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders, begin to manifest symptoms. Additionally, multiple adult psychiatric disorders originate in this developmental stage. By examine early alterations of brain profiles and their relationship with psychiatric behaviors, we will deepen our understanding regarding the neural bases of developmental psychopathology and provide quantified measures to identify pre-symptomatic dysfunction for early detection and prevention purposes. Such research outcomes could further improve the quality of life for children at-risk/suffering from psychiatric disorders, ultimately contributing to more efficient and tailored healthcare solutions in pediatric mental health.In this study, we focus on developing a model using multi-modal neuroimaging to examine the relationships between the brain’s structure-function couplings and multiple psychiatric disorders, by utilizing the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. By leveraging multiple psychiatric symptoms from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), we aim to 1) investigate whether structure-function couplings are associated with children’s psychiatric disorders; and 2) identify specific regions of interest (ROIs) in which the couplings have a significant effect on each symptom. The structure–function coupling is calculated by the Spearman rank correlation describing structural support for functional communication. We implement multivariate multiple regression (MMR) model with the structure-function couplings as the independent variable, six scales from the CBCL as dependent variables, and sex as a covariate. Statistical t-tests with multiple comparison corrections are performed to identify the significant ROIs. To ensure the robustness of our findings, we will conduct sensitivity analyses using the MMR model with different covariate sets and compare the results with multiple linear regression model.Preliminary results showed a high degree of uniformity in the impact of structure-function couplings across various disorders (average correlation = 0.88, standard deviation = 0.03). We found that a reduced SC-FC of ROIs in the default mode network correlated with elevated symptom scores in all six problems. An enhanced SC-FC coupling in subcortical regions was associated with an increase in externalizing symptoms like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). We will further evaluate the model’s performance by MSE, R
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, and test statistics. By integrating behavioral, structural, and functional data, we provided a statistical tool to quantify the relationship between structure-function couplings and diagnostic symptoms, which advance our understanding of mental health in adolescents.