All Publications
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Childhood gut microbiome is linked to internalizing symptoms at school age via the functional connectome.
Nature communications
2025; 16 (1): 9359
Abstract
The microbiome-gut-brain-axis plays a critical role in mental health. However, research linking the microbiome to brain function is limited, particularly during development, when tremendous plasticity occurs and many mental health issues, like depression and anxiety, initially manifest. Further complicating attempts to understand interactions between the brain and microbiome is the complex and multidimensional nature of both systems. In the current observational study (N = 55), we use sparse partial least squares to identify linear combinations of brain networks (brain signatures) derived from resting state fMRI scans at age 6 years that maximally covary with internalizing symptoms at age 7.5 years, before identifying microbe abundances (microbial profiles) derived from 16S rRNA sequencing of stool samples at age 2 years that maximally covary with those brain signatures. Finally, we test whether any early microbial profiles are indirectly associated with later internalizing symptoms via the brain signatures, highlighting potential microbial programming effects. We find that microbes in the Clostridiales order and Lachnospiraceae family are associated with internalizing symptoms in middle childhood through connectivity alterations within emotion-related brain networks.
View details for DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-64988-6
View details for PubMedID 41168153
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12575631
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Pollution burden and trajectories of pubertal development: Implications for sleep disturbances and depressive symptoms.
Psychoneuroendocrinology
2025; 181: 107586
Abstract
Childhood exposure to pollution has been associated with elevated levels of depressive symptoms during adolescence. Epidemiological studies have related exposure to pollution to altered pubertal timing; however, the effects of pollution exposure on levels of pubertal hormones and their developmental trajectories (i.e., pubertal tempo) are not known. Furthermore, how pollution-related alterations in pubertal development influence trajectories of depressive symptoms during adolescence is not well understood. One factor that has been linked to pollution exposure, pubertal development, and depressive symptoms, and that is modifiable, is sleep disturbances; these variables, however, have not been examined together in a single investigation. The current study examined the effects of pollution burden during childhood on trajectories of adrenal and gonadal development and their impact on trajectories of sleep disturbances and depressive symptoms during adolescence. 184 adolescents (109 females) completed four assessments, each approximately 2 years apart, starting at 9-13 years of age (M=11.37, SD=1.06). At each timepoint, participants completed measures assessing pubertal development, sleep disturbances, and depressive symptoms and provided saliva samples, from which levels of DHEA, testosterone, and estradiol (females only) were assayed. We estimated participants' pollution burden at the census tract-level using their residential addresses and publicly available environmental data. We found that female adolescents residing in neighborhoods with greater pollution burden showed delayed adrenarche and gonadarche based on levels of DHEA and estradiol, respectively, followed by faster DHEA and estradiol tempo into middle adolescence. These pollution burden-related increases in DHEA and estradiol tempo interacted with increasing levels of sleep disturbances to predict the highest increase in levels of depressive symptoms. Although pollution burden was associated with altered adrenal development in male adolescents, effects differed for DHEA and self-reported development, and these alterations did not interact with increases in sleep disturbances to predict trajectories of depressive symptoms. Thus, childhood pollution burden appears to affect pubertal development in sex-dependent ways that contribute to sex-differentiated risk for depression in adolescence.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2025.107586
View details for PubMedID 40907146
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Maternal Childhood Maltreatment, Development of Amygdala Volume, and Anxiety Symptoms in Offspring.
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
2025
Abstract
Exposure to childhood maltreatment increases risk for mental health difficulties across generations, affecting the development of offspring. In particular, maternal exposure to childhood maltreatment can shape the neurobiological development of their offspring, especially in brain regions implicated in emotional health. However, relevant studies are cross-sectional, limiting our understanding of how maternal childhood maltreatment might affect offspring neurodevelopment.Using data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes study, we investigated whether maternal report of childhood maltreatment was related to the development of offspring amygdala volume across 4 timepoints (ages 4.5-10.5 years; 1,143 scans from 430 children), how maltreatment-related alterations in amygdala volume development were related to children's anxiety symptoms at age 10.5 years (n=267), and whether these associations differed by offspring sex.Greater maternal childhood maltreatment was associated with larger amygdala volume in female children at ages 4.5 to 10.5 years, which, in turn, was associated with lower levels of anxiety symptoms at age 10.5 years in female but not in male children. Maternal childhood maltreatment was not associated with the development of amygdala volume in male children.These findings support the formulation that maternal childhood maltreatment has a sex-differentiated effect on offsprings' brain development and mental health outcomes. Our results advance our understanding of the effects of maternal childhood maltreatment on children's brain development and risk for psychopathology.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jaac.2025.03.027
View details for PubMedID 40250554
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Exposure to diesel-related particulate matter, cortisol stress responsivity, and depressive symptoms in adolescents.
Psychoneuroendocrinology
2024; 171: 107214
Abstract
Exposure to air pollution is associated with higher risk for psychopathology; however, the mechanisms underlying this association are not clear. Dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in response to stress has been implicated in depression. Here, we estimated annual exposure to particulate matter (PM) from diesel emissions in 170 9- to 15-year-old adolescents (56 % female) using their residential addresses and data from nearby monitoring sites. We obtained salivary cortisol samples from participants while they completed a social stress task and calculated area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) and with respect to increase (AUCi) in order to assess cortisol responsivity during stress. Participants also reported on their depressive symptoms and sleep disturbances. Greater exposure to diesel PM was associated with lower cortisol output (AUCg) during stress, which was associated with higher depressive symptoms, particularly for adolescents with more sleep disturbances. Importantly, these effects were independent of household and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and exposure to early adversity. Thus, HPA-axis dysfunction may be one mechanism through which environmental pollutants affect adolescents' mental health.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107214
View details for PubMedID 39426039
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Effects of Pollution Burden on Neural Function During Implicit Emotion Regulation and Longitudinal Changes in Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents.
Biological psychiatry global open science
2024; 4 (4): 100322
Abstract
Exposure to environmental pollutants early in life has been associated with increased prevalence and severity of depression in adolescents; however, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this association are not well understood. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated whether pollution burden in early adolescence (9-13 years) was associated with altered brain activation and connectivity during implicit emotion regulation and changes in depressive symptoms across adolescence.One hundred forty-five participants (n = 87 female; 9-13 years) provided residential addresses, from which we determined their relative pollution burden at the census tract level, and performed an implicit affective regulation task in the scanner. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing depressive symptoms at 3 time points, each approximately 2 years apart, from which we calculated within-person slopes of depressive symptoms. We conducted whole-brain activation and connectivity analyses to examine whether pollution burden was associated with alterations in brain function during implicit emotion regulation of positively and negatively valenced stimuli and how these effects were related to slopes of depressive symptoms across adolescence.Greater pollution burden was associated with greater bilateral medial prefrontal cortex activation and stronger bilateral medial prefrontal cortex connectivity with regions within the default mode network (e.g., temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus) during implicit regulation of negative emotions, which was associated with greater increases in depressive symptoms across adolescence in those exposed to higher pollution burden.Adolescents living in communities characterized by greater pollution burden showed altered default mode network functioning during implicit regulation of negative emotions that was associated with increases in depressive symptoms across adolescence.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100322
View details for PubMedID 38957313
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC11217611
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Associations among early life adversity, sleep disturbances, and depressive symptoms in adolescent females and males: a longitudinal investigation.
Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines
2023
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Exposure to adversity early in life (ELA) has been associated with elevated risk for depression during adolescence, particularly for females; the mechanisms underlying this association, however, are poorly understood. One potential mechanism linking ELA and sex differences in depressive symptoms is sleep disturbances, which increase during adolescence and are more common in females. Here, we examined whether sleep disturbances mediate the association between ELA and increases in depressive symptoms during adolescence and whether this mediation differs by sex.METHODS: 224 (N=132 females) youth were recruited at age 9-13years and assessed every 2years across three timepoints. At the first timepoint, we conducted extensive interviews about stressful events participants experienced; participants provided subjective severity ratings of events and we objectively scored the severity of each event. Self-reported sleep disturbances and depressive symptoms were assessed at all timepoints. We conducted linear mixed models to estimate both initial levels and changes in sleep disturbances and depressive symptoms, and moderated mediation analyses to test whether initial levels and/or changes in sleep disturbances mediated the association of ELA (objective and subjective) with increases in depressive symptoms across adolescence and whether the mediations differed by sex.RESULTS: While higher initial levels and increases in sleep problems were uniquely associated with increases in depressive symptoms for males and females, they were related to ELA differently by sex. For females, greater ELA (both objectively and subjectively rated) was associated with higher initial levels of sleep problems, which in turn were associated with increases in depressive symptoms from early to late adolescence. In contrast, for males, ELA exposure was not associated with either initial levels of, or increases in, sleep problems.CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the role of sleep disturbances during the transition to adolescence in mediating sex differences in the effects of ELA on depressive symptoms.
View details for DOI 10.1111/jcpp.13942
View details for PubMedID 38156675
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Adolescents' Perceptions of Parenting Behaviors Mediate the Association of Maternal Childhood Abuse With Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors
TRANSLATIONAL ISSUES IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2025; 11 (4): 477-490
View details for DOI 10.1037/tps0000478
View details for Web of Science ID 001619871100001
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Adolescents' Perceptions of Parenting Behaviors Mediate the Association of Maternal Childhood Abuse with Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors.
Translational issues in psychological science
2025; 11 (4): 477-490
Abstract
Exposure to childhood maltreatment (CM) increases risk for psychiatric disorders and maladaptive outcomes across the lifespan, including the transition into parenthood. Mothers with histories of CM are more likely to experience poorer mental health and engage in negative parenting practices. Maternal CM influences parenting behaviors, potentially leading to adolescent maladaptive outcomes. This study examines the effects of maternal CM on adolescent emotional and behavioral difficulties, focusing on how mothers' and adolescents' perceptions of parental psychological control (PPC) mediate these relationships.We analyzed data from 148 mother-adolescent dyads recruited for a longitudinal investigation of early life stress and psychopathology. Mothers completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire assessing CM, and both mothers and adolescents reported perceptions of PPC. Adolescents reported internalizing and externalizing problems 2-4 years later. Mediation analyses assessed maternal CM's effects on adolescent behavioral problems, examining adolescent- and mother-reported PPC as mediators.Maternal childhood abuse significantly predicted adolescent externalizing problems, mediated by adolescents' perceptions of PPC. Higher maternal childhood abuse correlated with increased adolescent-reported PPC, which was associated with greater externalizing problems. Mother-reported PPC did not mediate this association, highlighting adolescents' perceptions. Maternal neglect had no significant direct or indirect effects on adolescent outcomes, or on adolescent- or mother-reported PPC.These findings underscore the importance of adolescents' perceptions of parenting in understanding the effects of maternal childhood abuse on externalizing problems. Lack of findings for maternal neglect highlights the need to identify alternative mechanisms by which neglect may affect adolescent functioning. Interventions promoting positive mother-adolescent relationships could improve adolescent psychosocial outcomes.
View details for DOI 10.1037/tps0000478
View details for PubMedID 41479774
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12755837
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Value-Based Cognitive Control Moderates the Relation of Inflammation with Depression in Adolescents.
Social cognitive and affective neuroscience
2025
Abstract
Depression has been linked to both elevated systemic inflammation and altered brain function related to reward processing and cognitive control. We know little, however, about how these factors jointly confer risk for this disorder, especially during adolescence, when depressive symptoms typically emerge. In this study we examined brain function during an incentivized go/no-go task in a community sample of 100 adolescents (mean [SD]=15.8 [1.1] years). We assessed neural activation and task-dependent functional connectivity using a psychophysiological interaction analysis during the contrast of High Value > Low Value targets in two regions: the ventral striatum (VS) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). We hypothesized that activation and functional connectivity in these regions would moderate the association between C-reactive protein (CRP) and depressive symptoms. Regression analyses yielded a significant interaction (β=-0.29; p = 0.009): in youth with attenuated VS activation, increased CRP was associated with higher symptoms; this pattern was reversed in adolescents with even modest VS activation. No similar effects were obtained with the vlPFC or functional connectivity. Thus, striatal activation during value-based cognitive control may shape how inflammation relates to depressive symptoms in adolescents, underscoring the importance of elucidating the functioning of reward circuitry during this sensitive developmental period.
View details for DOI 10.1093/scan/nsaf121
View details for PubMedID 41298307
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Psychobiological mechanisms underlying the association between early life stress and depression in adolescence.
Molecular psychiatry
2025
Abstract
Early life stress (ELS), or exposure to adverse experiences before the age of 18 years, is alarmingly prevalent and is a strong risk factor for the development of depression in adolescence. Despite the consistency of this association, we do not fully understand how, or for whom, ELS gets 'under the skin' to increase adolescents' risk for experiencing depression. In this context, researchers have identified psychobiological characteristics that may serve to link early adversity to risk for adolescent depression. In this paper we discuss four of these characteristics: stress reactivity, reward processing, inflammation, and biological aging. For each of these putative mechanisms we describe the nature of their associations with both ELS and depression, focusing when possible on these relations during adolescence. In addition to being a vulnerable period for the emergence of depression, adolescence is also characterized by developmental shifts in critical domains of psychobiological functioning that add nuance to the associations with early life stress and depression. Following this presentation, we discuss how these constructs likely co-occur and interact in ways that alter the relation between early adversity and risk for adolescent depression; we also consider factors that might serve to moderate this association. We conclude by describing unresolved issues and suggesting directions for future research concerning the ways that ELS increases adolescents' risk for the development of depression. Specifically, we discuss how researchers might address the lack of consistency in findings examining associations among ELS, biological functioning, and depression in adolescent samples by examining systematically the types of stress experienced, the biological functioning and specific aspects of depression that are assessed in each study, and moderators such as participants' sex, developmental stage, and family history. We seek to stimulate researchers to examine other mechanisms that might underlie the association of early adversity with depression in order to inform the development of more effective approaches to the prevention and treatment of this debilitating disorder.
View details for DOI 10.1038/s41380-025-03348-8
View details for PubMedID 41243003
View details for PubMedCentralID 2966503
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Frontolimbic Connectivity and Threat-Related Psychopathology: A Data-Driven Test of Models of Early Adversity.
Developmental psychobiology
2025; 67 (5): e70080
Abstract
Early adversity is a well-established risk factor for psychopathology in youth. Contemporary taxonomies of adversity seek to distill the diverse stressors children face into meaningful categories of experience to enable more precise prediction of risk; however, few studies have tested these models using data-driven approaches in well-characterized, longitudinal samples. Here, we examined the latent structure of early stress across diverse domains of exposure, tested differential associations with psychopathology in adolescence, and investigated frontolimbic functional connectivity as a potential mediator. In a sample of 168 youth (Mage = 11.36), factor analyses identified two latent stress factors at baseline-"Parenting" and "Deprivation & Unpredictability"-and a single "Psychopathology" factor extracted from measures of mental health obtained 2 years later. While adverse parenting predicted greater psychopathology, exposure to threat emerged as the strongest predictor of adolescent mental health problems. High-dimensional regularized mediation analyses revealed that frontolimbic functional connectivity mediated the association between Threat and Psychopathology in girls but not in boys. These findings suggest that widely used dimensional models overlook key aspects of adversity, including sex-linked asymmetries across neurodevelopment and the distinct role of parenting-related stress. Refining adversity taxonomies across diverse samples and stress domains is crucial to advancing targeted interventions for youth mental health.
View details for DOI 10.1002/dev.70080
View details for PubMedID 40898734
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Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter During Pregnancy Is Associated With Hippocampal Development in Offspring.
Biological psychiatry global open science
2025; 5 (4): 100490
Abstract
As the global climate crisis persists, it becomes increasingly important to understand how exposure to environmental toxins can affect the developing brain. Although researchers are beginning to document links between prenatal exposure to air pollution and brain structure, it is not clear when these associations emerge.We leveraged data from the GUSTO (Growing Up Toward Healthy Outcomes in Singapore) longitudinal birth cohort study to examine prenatal exposure to air pollution and brain development during childhood. Spatiotemporally interpolated prenatal exposure to particulate matter <2.5 μm was averaged across each prenatal week. Structural magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained when children were ages 4.5, 6.0, 7.5, and 10.5 years (N = 325, 47.7% female) and segmented with FreeSurfer 7.1. A subset of parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist at the final assessment (n = 195, 46.7% female). We used latent growth modeling to estimate a slope of hippocampal volume growth in each hemisphere from ages 4.5 to 10.5 years, adjusted for intracranial volume.Distributed lag models indicated that late gestational exposure (during weeks 36-40) was associated with slower hippocampal growth in both hemispheres. Importantly, we also found that faster hippocampal volume growth in the right hemisphere was associated with more externalizing and attention problems at 10.5 years.Future research should examine mechanisms that may underlie or contribute to these associations. These findings underscore the importance of efforts to reduce pollution, particularly for pregnant people and their children.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2025.100490
View details for PubMedID 40290196
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC12032870
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Age Moderates the Association Between Internalizing Symptoms and Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Activation During Value-Contingent Cognitive Control in Typically-Developing Adolescents
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC. 2025
View details for Web of Science ID 001491712900080
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Effects of Pollution Burden on Neural Function During Implicit Emotion Regulation and Longitudinal Changes in Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents
BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY: GLOBAL OPEN SCIENCE
2024; 4 (4)
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.bpsgos.2024.100322
View details for Web of Science ID 001251558600001
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Socioeconomic Disadvantage Moderates the Association of Systemic Inflammation with Amygdala Volume in Adolescents Over a Two-Year Interval: An Exploratory Study.
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
2024
Abstract
Research has demonstrated an association between elevated systemic inflammation and changes in brain function. Affective areas of the brain involved in processing threat (e.g., amygdala) and reward (e.g., nucleus accumbens [NAcc]) appear to be sensitive to inflammation. Early life stress (ELS), such as experiencing low socioeconomic status (SES), may also potentiate this association, but relevant evidence has come primarily from cross-sectional studies of brain function. It is unclear whether similar associations are present between ELS, inflammation, and brain structure, particularly in typically developing populations.We recruited and assessed 50 adolescents (31F/19M) from the community (M±SD age=15.5±1.1; range=13.1-17.5 years ) and in exploratory analyses examined whether changes in C-reactive protein (ΔCRP) from blood spots predict changes in gray matter volumes (ΔGMV) in the bilateral amygdala and NAcc over a two-year period. We also investigated whether experiencing ELS, operationalized using a comprehensive composite score of SES disadvantage at the family and neighborhood levels, significantly moderated the association between ΔCRP and ΔGMV.We found that ΔCRP was negatively associated with ΔAmygdala GMV (i.e. increasing CRP levels were associated with decreasing amygdala volume; β=-0.84; p=0.012). This effect was stronger in youth who experienced greater SES disadvantage (β=-0.56; p=0.025).These findings suggest that increases in systemic inflammation are associated with reductions in amygdala GMV in adolescents, potentially signaling accelerated maturation, and that these neuroimmune processes are compounded in adolescents who experienced greater SES disadvantage. Our findings are consistent with theoretical frameworks of neuroimmune associations and suggest they may influence adolescent neurodevelopment.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.05.002
View details for PubMedID 38815859
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Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis and Internalizing in Early Childhood
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC. 2024: S224-S225
View details for Web of Science ID 001282811900529
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The cortisol/DHEA ratio mediates the association between early life stress and externalizing problems in adolescent boys.
Psychoneuroendocrinology
2024; 165: 107034
Abstract
Despite evidence that early life stress (ELS) can influence the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and increase maladaptive behaviors in adolescence, less attention has been paid to the role of the coordinated effects of the two primary adrenal hormones, cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), in these associations.138 typically developing adolescents (76 females) reported the stressful events experienced during childhood and early adolescence across 30 domains. Two years later we assessed levels of externalizing problems and obtained salivary levels of cortisol and DHEA. Using causal moderated mediation analyses, we examined whether the ratio of cortisol to DHEA (CD ratio) mediates the association between ELS and subsequent externalizing problems.We found that ELS is associated with both a lower CD ratio and more externalizing problems. Importantly, a lower CD ratio mediated the association between ELS and externalizing problems in boys.An imbalance in adrenal hormones may be a mechanism through which ELS leads to an increase in externalizing problems in adolescent boys. These findings underscore the utility of using the CD ratio to index HPA-axis functioning.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2024.107034
View details for PubMedID 38554595
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The growing interdisciplinarity of developmental psychopathology: Implications for science and training.
Development and psychopathology
2024: 1-11
Abstract
The field of developmental psychopathology has grown exponentially over the past decades, and has become increasingly multifaceted. The initial focus on understanding abnormal child psychology has broadened to the study of the origins of psychopathology, with the goals of preventing and alleviating disorder and promoting healthy development. In this paper, we discuss how technological advances and global events have expanded the questions that researchers in developmental psychopathology can address. We do so by describing a longitudinal study that we have been conducting for the past dozen years. We originally planned to examine the effects of early adversity on trajectories of brain development, endocrine function, and depressive symptoms across puberty; it has since become an interdisciplinary study encompassing diverse domains like inflammation, sleep, biological aging, the environment, and child functioning post-pandemic, that we believe will advance our understanding of neurobehavioral development. This increase in the breadth in our study emerged from an expansion of the field; we encourage researchers to embrace these dynamic changes. In this context, we discuss challenges, opportunities, and institutional changes related to the growing interdisciplinarity of the field with respect to training the next generation of investigators to mitigate the burden of mental illness in youth.
View details for DOI 10.1017/S0954579424000580
View details for PubMedID 38516854
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Early life stress predicts trajectories of emotional problems and hippocampal volume in adolescence.
European child & adolescent psychiatry
2023
Abstract
Exposure to early life stress (ELS) has been consistently associated with adverse emotional and neural consequences in youth. The development of brain structures such as the hippocampus, which plays a significant role in stress and emotion regulation, may be particularly salient in the development of psychopathology. Prior work has documented smaller hippocampal volume (HCV) in relation to both ELS exposure and risk for psychopathology. We used longitudinal k-means clustering to identify simultaneous trajectories of HCV and emotional problems in 155 youth across three assessments conducted approximately two years apart (mean baseline age = 11.33 years, 57% female). We also examined depressive symptoms and resilience approximately two years after the third timepoint. We identified three clusters of participants: a cluster with high HCV and low emotional problems; a cluster with low HCV and high emotional problems; and a cluster with low HCV and low emotional problems. Importantly, severity of ELS was associated with greater likelihood of belonging to the low HCV/high symptom cluster than to the low HCV/low symptom cluster. Further, low HCV/high symptom participants had more depressive symptoms and lower resilience scores than did participants in the low HCV/low symptom, but not than in the high HCV/low symptom cluster. Our findings suggest that smaller HCV indexes biological sensitivity to stress. This adds to our understanding of the ways in which ELS can affect hippocampal and emotional development in young people and points to hippocampal volume as a marker of susceptibility to context.
View details for DOI 10.1007/s00787-023-02331-4
View details for PubMedID 38135803
View details for PubMedCentralID 6179355
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Early life stress, sleep disturbances, and depressive symptoms during adolescence: The role of the cingulum bundle.
Developmental cognitive neuroscience
2023; 63: 101303
Abstract
Adolescence is often characterized by sleep disturbances that can affect the development of white matter tracts implicated in affective and cognitive regulation, including the cingulate portion of the cingulum bundle (CGC) and the uncinate fasciculus (UF). These effects may be exacerbated in adolescents exposed to early life adversity (ELA). We examined the longitudinal relations between sleep problems and CGC and UF microstructure during adolescence and their relation to depressive symptoms as a function of exposure to ELA. We assessed self-reported sleep disturbances and depressive symptoms and acquired diffusion-weighted MRI scans twice: in early adolescence (9-13 years) and four years later (13-17 years) (N=72 complete cases). Independent of ELA, higher initial levels and increases in sleep problems were related to increases in depressive symptoms. Further, increases in right CGC fractional anisotropy (FA) mediated the association between sleep problems and depressive symptoms for youth who experienced lower, but not higher, levels of ELA. In youth with higher ELA, higher initial levels of and steeper decreases in sleep problems were associated with greater decreases in right UF FA, but were unrelated to depressive symptoms. Our findings highlight the importance of sleep quality in shaping fronto-cingulate-limbic tract development and depressive symptoms during adolescence.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101303
View details for PubMedID 37738837
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Early Life Stress Predicts Adolescent Trajectories of Emotional Problems and Hippocampal Volume
ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC. 2023: S86
View details for Web of Science ID 000993018500205