Research Center of the Institut Universitaire en Santé Mentale de Montréal, Montreal, Canada; Department of Psychiatry and Addictology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada.
Neuroimage Clin. 2023;37:103346. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2023.103346. Epub 2023 Feb 8.
A recent meta-analysis of resting-state functional connectivity studies revealed that individuals exhibiting antisocial behaviors or conduct problems may show disrupted brain connectivity in networks underpinning socio-affective and attentional processes. However, studies included in the meta-analysis generally rely on small sample sizes and substantially differ in terms of psychometric scales and neuroimaging methodologies. Therefore, we aimed to identify reliable functional brain connectivity alterations associated with severity of conduct problems using a large sample of adolescents and two measures of conduct problems. In a sample of 1416 children and adolescents, mass-univariate analyses of connectivity measures between 333 cortical parcels were conducted to examine the relationship between resting-state functional cortical-cortical connectome and the severity of conduct problems using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). At a liberal threshold, results showed that the functional brain connectivity significantly associated with conduct problems largely differ between the two scales. Indeed, only 21 pairs of brain regions overlapped between the CBCL and SDQ. Permutation feature importance of these 21 brain connectivity measures revealed that connectivity between precentral/postcentral gyri and lateral prefrontal cortex (both ventral and dorsal) were the most important features in explaining variance in conduct problems. The current study highlights that psychometric measures may yield distinct functional connectivity results. Moreover, severity of conduct problems in children and adolescents was mainly associated with deficient functional connectivity of somatomotor and ventral attention networks indicating potential alterations in motor, cognitive and reward processes.
最近的一项静息态功能连接研究的荟萃分析表明，表现出反社会行为或行为问题的个体可能在支持社会情感和注意过程的网络中表现出大脑连接的中断。然而，荟萃分析中包含的研究通常依赖于小样本量，并且在心理计量尺度和神经影像学方法学方面存在很大差异。因此，我们旨在使用大量青少年样本和两种行为问题度量来确定与行为问题严重程度相关的可靠的功能大脑连接改变。在 1416 名儿童和青少年的样本中，进行了 333 个皮质区之间连通性测量的大规模单变量分析，以使用儿童行为检查表（CBCL）和优点和困难问卷（SDQ）来检查静息状态功能皮质皮质连接组与行为问题严重程度之间的关系。在一个宽松的阈值下，结果表明，与行为问题显著相关的功能大脑连接在两个量表之间存在很大差异。实际上，CBCL 和 SDQ 之间仅重叠 21 对大脑区域。对这 21 种脑连接测量的置换特征重要性分析表明，中央前/后回和外侧前额叶皮质（腹侧和背侧）之间的连接是解释行为问题差异的最重要特征。本研究强调，心理计量学测量可能产生不同的功能连接结果。此外，儿童和青少年行为问题的严重程度主要与躯体运动和腹侧注意网络的功能连接不足有关，这表明运动、认知和奖励过程可能存在潜在改变。
