Michel Lea C, McCormick Ethan M, Kievit Rogier A
Cognitive Neuroscience Department, Radboud University Medical Center, 6525 GA Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Methodology and Statistics, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
bioRxiv. 2023 Nov 6:2023.03.06.529634. doi: 10.1101/2023.03.06.529634.
Individual differences in cognitive performance in childhood are a key predictor of significant life outcomes such as educational attainment and mental health. Differences in cognitive ability are governed in part by variations in brain structure. However, studies commonly focus on either grey or white matter metrics in humans, leaving open the key question as to whether grey or white matter microstructure play distinct or complementary roles supporting cognitive performance. To compare the role of grey and white matter in supporting cognitive performance, we used regularized structural equation models to predict cognitive performance with grey and white matter measures. Specifically, we compared how grey matter (volume, cortical thickness and surface area) and white matter measures (volume, fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity) predicted individual differences in cognitive performance. The models were tested in 11,876 children (ABCD Study, 5680 female; 6196 male) at 10 years old. We found that grey and white matter metrics bring partly non-overlapping information to predict cognitive performance. The models with only grey or white matter explained respectively 15.4% and 12.4% of the variance in cognitive performance, while the combined model explained 19.0%. Zooming in we additionally found that different metrics within grey and white matter had different predictive power, and that the tracts/regions that were most predictive of cognitive performance differed across metric. These results show that studies focusing on a single metric in either grey or white matter to study the link between brain structure and cognitive performance are missing a key part of the equation.
儿童时期认知表现的个体差异是重要生活成果（如教育程度和心理健康）的关键预测指标。认知能力的差异部分受大脑结构变化的影响。然而，以往研究通常只关注人类大脑的灰质或白质指标，从而留下了一个关键问题：灰质或白质微观结构在支持认知表现方面是发挥独特作用还是互补作用。为了比较灰质和白质在支持认知表现中的作用，我们使用正则化结构方程模型，通过灰质和白质测量来预测认知表现。具体而言，我们比较了灰质（体积、皮质厚度和表面积）和白质测量指标（体积、分数各向异性和平均扩散率）如何预测认知表现的个体差异。这些模型在11876名10岁儿童（ABCD研究，5680名女性；6196名男性）中进行了测试。我们发现，灰质和白质指标为预测认知表现带来了部分不重叠的信息。仅包含灰质或白质的模型分别解释了认知表现方差的15.4%和12.4%，而综合模型解释了19.0%。进一步分析发现，灰质和白质中的不同指标具有不同的预测能力，并且对认知表现预测性最强的神经束/区域在不同指标间存在差异。这些结果表明，仅关注灰质或白质单一指标来研究大脑结构与认知表现之间联系的研究忽略了关键因素。
