PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Cassidy L. McDermott
AU  - Jakob Seidlitz
AU  - Ajay Nadig
AU  - Siyuan Liu
AU  - Liv S. Clasen
AU  - Jonathan D. Blumenthal
AU  - Paul Kirkpatrick Reardon
AU  - François Lalonde
AU  - Raihaan Patel
AU  - Mallar M. Chakravarty
AU  - Jason P. Lerch
AU  - Armin Raznahan
TI  - Longitudinally Mapping Childhood Socioeconomic Status Associations with Cortical and Subcortical Morphology
AID  - 10.1101/352187
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 352187
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/20/352187.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/20/352187.full
AB  - Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) impacts cognitive development and mental health, but its association with structural brain development is not yet well-characterized. Here, we analyzed 1243 longitudinally-acquired structural MRI scans from 623 youth to investigate the relation between SES and cortical and subcortical morphology between ages 5 and 25 years. We found positive associations between SES and total volumes of the brain, cortical sheet, and four separate subcortical structures. These associations were developmentally fixed rather than age-dependent. Surface-based shape analysis revealed that higher SES is associated with areal expansion of (i) lateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate, lateral temporal, and superior parietal cortices and (ii) ventrolateral thalamic, and medial amygdalo-hippocampal sub-regions. Meta-analyses of functional imaging data indicate that cortical correlates of SES are centered on brain systems subserving sensorimotor functions, language, memory, and emotional processing. We further show that anatomical variation within a subset of these cortical regions partially mediates the positive association between SES and IQ. Finally, we identify neuroanatomical correlates of SES that exist above and beyond accompanying variation in IQ. Our findings clarify the spatiotemporal patterning of SES-related neuroanatomical variation and inform ongoing efforts to dissect the causal pathways underpinning observed associations between childhood SES and regional brain anatomy.