Levenstein Jacob M, Driver Christina, Boyes Amanda, Parker Marcella, Shan Zack, Lagopoulos Jim, Hermens Daniel F
Thompson Institute, University of the Sunshine Coast, Birtinya, QLD, Australia.
Neuroimage Rep. 2023 Mar 28;3(2):100167. doi: 10.1016/j.ynirp.2023.100167. eCollection 2023 Jun.
Neurodevelopment during early childhood and adolescence are recognised as critical periods, with potential life-long lasting impacts on mental health and wellbeing. The time-frame of these neurodevelopmental changes also correspond to one in five individuals aged 9-17 years old being diagnosed with a mental health condition. Furthermore, sex-based differences in the diagnosed prevalence of mental health conditions are also well characterised and can be leveraged to differentiate development of brain structures between sexes throughout childhood and adolescence. During adolescence, early observed mental health symptoms, alongside measures of brain development, may provide utility toward understanding both the onset timing of various mental conditions, and a neurobiological explanation for disproportionate prevalence's among sexes. This study aims to determine sex differences in psychological distress levels and structural brain volume relationships in early adolescents. To address this question, we first present and then utilise the 'first hundred brains' (FHB) cohort, a multimodal dataset of 12-to-13 year-olds individuals enrolled in the Longitudinal Adolescent Brain Study (LABS). The FHB dataset consists of 101 unique individuals (47 female), aged 13.01 ± 0.55 years. Psychological distress was measured using the Kessler-10, a self-report questionnaire probing recent experiences of anxiety and depression symptoms. All participants underwent 3T MRI brain scans. T1-weighted structural scans were processed using FreeSurfer's Sequence Adaptive Multimodal segmentation pipeline, with volume measurements from 39 regions of interest included in the analyses. Findings revealed that compared to age matched males, early adolescent females have significantly higher psychological distress as well as significantly larger hippocampi and ventral diencephalon, bilaterally. Correlational analyses revealed a significant positive association between psychological distress scores and right amygdala volumes for males, but not in females, or the combined cohort. In this initial analysis of the FHB dataset, we have identified significant sex differences in psychological distress, brain volumes, and the relationships between these two metrics. With the peak age-of-onset for many psychiatric disorders occurring during adolescence, research focused on youth mental health vulnerability and opportunity for early detection, prevention and improvement is vitally important.
幼儿期和青少年期的神经发育被认为是关键时期，对心理健康和幸福有着潜在的终生影响。这些神经发育变化的时间框架也与每五个9至17岁被诊断患有心理健康疾病的人中就有一人相对应。此外，心理健康疾病诊断患病率的性别差异也得到了很好的描述，并且可以用来区分儿童期和青少年期两性之间脑结构的发育情况。在青少年期，早期观察到的心理健康症状以及脑发育指标，可能有助于理解各种精神疾病的发病时间，以及对两性患病率不均衡的神经生物学解释。本研究旨在确定青少年早期心理困扰水平和脑结构体积关系中的性别差异。为了解决这个问题，我们首先展示并使用了“前一百个大脑”（FHB）队列，这是一个多模态数据集，来自参与纵向青少年大脑研究（LABS）的12至13岁个体。FHB数据集由101名独特个体（47名女性）组成，年龄为13.01±0.55岁。使用凯斯勒10量表测量心理困扰，这是一份自我报告问卷，用于探究近期焦虑和抑郁症状的经历。所有参与者都接受了3T磁共振成像脑部扫描。T1加权结构扫描使用FreeSurfer的序列自适应多模态分割管道进行处理，分析中包括来自39个感兴趣区域的体积测量。研究结果显示，与年龄匹配的男性相比，青少年早期女性的心理困扰明显更高，双侧海马体和腹侧间脑也明显更大。相关分析显示，男性的心理困扰得分与右侧杏仁核体积之间存在显著正相关，但女性或合并队列中不存在这种相关性。在对FHB数据集的初步分析中，我们确定了心理困扰、脑体积以及这两个指标之间的关系存在显著性别差异。由于许多精神疾病的发病高峰年龄出现在青少年期，专注于青少年心理健康脆弱性以及早期发现、预防和改善机会的研究至关重要。
