Stanford University, Department of Psychology, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
University of Southern California, Imaging Genetics Center, Mary and Mark Stevens Institute for Neuroimaging and Informatics, Keck School of Medicine, Marina del Rey, CA 90292, USA.
Dev Cogn Neurosci. 2020 Aug;44:100796. doi: 10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100796. Epub 2020 May 18.
Deviations in neurodevelopment may underlie the association between lower childhood socioeconomic status and difficulties in cognitive and socioemotional domains. Most previous investigations of the association between childhood socioeconomic status and brain morphology have used cross-sectional designs with samples that span wide age ranges, occluding effects specific to adolescence. Sex differences in the association between socioeconomic status and neurodevelopment may emerge or intensify during adolescence. In a sample representative of the San Francisco Bay Area, we used whole-brain tensor-based morphometry to examine sex differences in the cross-sectional association between variation in family income-to-needs ratio (INR) and cortical and subcortical gray and white matter volume during early adolescence (ages 9-13 years; N = 147), as well as in the longitudinal association between INR and change in volume from early to later adolescence (ages 11-16 years, N = 109). Biological sex interacted with INR to explain variation in volume in several areas cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Effects were primarily in cortical gray matter areas, including regions of the association cortex and sensorimotor processing areas. Effect sizes tended to be larger in boys than in girls. Biological sex may be an important variable to consider in analyses of the effects of family income on structural neurodevelopment during adolescence.
神经发育的偏差可能是儿童社会经济地位较低与认知和社会情感领域困难之间关联的基础。大多数先前关于儿童社会经济地位与大脑形态之间关联的研究都使用了具有广泛年龄范围样本的横截面设计，从而掩盖了青春期特有的影响。社会经济地位与神经发育之间的关联在青春期可能会出现或加剧性别差异。在一个具有代表性的旧金山湾区样本中，我们使用全脑基于张量的形态测量法，研究了家庭收入需求比（INR）变化与皮质和皮质下灰质和白质体积在青少年早期（9-13 岁；N=147）的横截面关联以及 INR 与从青少年早期到晚期的体积变化之间的纵向关联之间的性别差异（N=109）。生物学性别与 INR 相互作用，解释了几个区域的体积在横截面上和纵向变化。影响主要在皮质灰质区域，包括联合皮层和感觉运动处理区域。男孩的效应大小往往大于女孩。在分析家庭收入对青少年时期结构神经发育的影响时，生物学性别可能是一个重要的变量。
