Specificity of Structural Brain Markers of Psychopathology Risk

[mattmattoni]

Research question(s)

Are structural brain markers of psychopathology risk, defined by parental history of a particular disorder, specific to the disorder of history or generalized across multiple psychopathological disorders?

Description

Parental history of psychopathological disorders such as depression, anxiety, and substance use, is an established risk factor for youth to develop that disorder. Previously in the ABCD dataset, youth with a parental depressive history were found to have subcortical volume abnormalities, particularly a smaller putamen, and were nearly twice as likely as youth without a parental depressive history (Pagliaccio, 2020). To my knowledge, similar work of brain abnormalities is yet to be studied for children of parents with history of anxiety or substance use disorders. Furthermore, it is unknown whether structural abnormalities and risk are specific to the disorder of parental history, or generalized across disorders.

The purpose of this study will be to characterize brain structure abnormalities (subcortical volume and/or cortical thickness) of children with parental histories of depression, anxiety, or substance use disorders in order to test if abnormalities are specific to the disorder, or similar across disorders. Risk will similarly be characterized as disorder-specific or generalized. Findings will be important to understanding childhood risk for the development of psychopathology and understanding of comorbid risk.

Tools and algorithms to be used

FreeSurfer MRI Volumes and Thickness outputs. Clinical Measures for parent (Modification of the Family History Assessment from NCANDA) and youth (parent-report KSADS).

Skills we could use help with (optional)

My tentative plan would be to use a linear model for youth with parental history of depression, using youth with parental history of anxiety and youth with parental history of substance use as covariate, but I could use help with the analysis plan.
I am definitely open to other modeling techniques and help nesting site and family relationships within the model.
I would also be interested in other disorders that collaborators are interested in, as well as potentially using the CBCL as a dimensional approach.

Also, I think pubertal status could be an important covariate. We could use parent-report scales, but if anyone is interested in working with biospecimens of pubertal hormons that could be a great addition!

Suggested keywords/tags

psychopathology risk, structural brain abnormalities, parental history

[hhopman]

Hi Matt!

I would love to collaborate with you on this project.
I was thinking that the timing of the depressive episodes may also be relevant (not sure whether there is a variable that measured this) but I can imagine that the brain may be affected to a larger extent if there was an episode during pregnancy or postnatal compared to long before a child was born.

Further, it would also be interesting to examine the functional and structural connectivity (compare children with parental history of depression/substance abuse/anxiety versus children without a family history of these disorders).

Maybe we can arrange a Zoom meeting to further discuss it?

Best,
Helene

Update: I am currently working on functional and structural connectivity to predict treatment response to transcranial magnetic stimulation in patients with treatment-refractory depression. Therefore, I have some experience with the following neuroimaging software: FSL, Freesurfer, SPM, CONN. Programming languages: R and MATLAB (and currently learning python).

[mattmattoni]

Hi Helene,

Thank you for the interest and message! I'd be very happy to have you join on and you have some really interesting ideas. I saw your message on Slack and we can talk more there to begin creating a plan of what we want to tackle!

[AdefunkeOmosefe]

Hi Matt, I would love to join your team. Your research focus is an area of interest for me. Thanks