Neuroanatomical Variability and Substance Use Initiation in Late Childhood and Early Adolescence.

Importance: The extent to which neuroanatomical variability associated with early substance involvement, which is associated with subsequent risk for substance use disorder development, reflects preexisting risk and/or consequences of substance exposure remains poorly understood.

Objective: To examine neuroanatomical features associated with early substance use initiation and to what extent associations may reflect preexisting vulnerability.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Cohort study using data from baseline through 3-year follow-up assessments of the ongoing longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

Associations between prenatal caffeine exposure and child development: Longitudinal results from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Objective: Though caffeine use during pregnancy is common, its longitudinal associations with child behavioral and physical health outcomes remain poorly understood. Here, we estimated associations between prenatal caffeine exposure, body mass index (BMI), and behavior as children enter adolescence.

Method: Longitudinal data and caregiver-reported prenatal caffeine exposure were obtained from the ongoing Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which recruited 11,875 children aged 9-11 years at baseline from 21 sites across the United States starting June 1, 2016.

Associations between polygenic scores for cognitive and non-cognitive factors of educational attainment and measures of behavior, psychopathology, and neuroimaging in the adolescent brain cognitive development study.

Background: Educational attainment (EduA) is correlated with life outcomes, and EduA itself is influenced by both cognitive and non-cognitive factors. A recent study performed a 'genome-wide association study (GWAS) by subtraction,' subtracting genetic effects for cognitive performance from an educational attainment GWAS to create orthogonal 'cognitive' and 'non-cognitive' factors. These cognitive and non-cognitive factors showed associations with behavioral health outcomes in adults; however, whether these correlations are present during childhood is unclear.

Kappa opioids inhibit spinal output neurons to suppress itch.

Itch is a protective sensation that drives scratching. Although specific cell types have been proposed to underlie itch, the neural basis for itch remains unclear. Here, we used two-photon Ca imaging of the dorsal horn to visualize neuronal populations that are activated by itch-inducing agents.

A Phenome-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) of Genetic Risk for C-Reactive Protein in Children of European Ancestry: Results From the ABCD Study.

Background: C-reactive protein (CRP) is a moderately heritable marker of systemic inflammation that is associated with adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Identifying factors associated with genetic liability to elevated CRP in childhood may inform our understanding of variability in CRP that could be targeted to prevent and/or delay the onset of related health outcomes.

Methods: We conducted a phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) of genetic risk for elevated CRP (i.

Cross-ancestry genetic investigation of schizophrenia, cannabis use disorder, and tobacco smoking.

Individuals with schizophrenia frequently experience co-occurring substance use, including tobacco smoking and heavy cannabis use, and substance use disorders. There is interest in understanding the extent to which these relationships are causal, and to what extent shared genetic factors play a role. We explored the relationships between schizophrenia (Scz; European ancestry N = 161,405; African ancestry N = 15,846), cannabis use disorder (CanUD; European ancestry N = 886,025; African ancestry N = 120,208), and ever-regular tobacco smoking (Smk; European ancestry N = 805,431; African ancestry N = 24,278) using the largest available genome-wide studies of these phenotypes in individuals of African and European ancestries.

Alcohol milestones and internalizing, externalizing, and executive function: longitudinal and polygenic score associations.

Background: Although the link between alcohol involvement and behavioral phenotypes (e.g. impulsivity, negative affect, executive function [EF]) is well-established, the directionality of these associations, specificity to stages of alcohol involvement, and extent of shared genetic liability remain unclear.

Neuroanatomical variability associated with early substance use initiation: Results from the ABCD Study.

The extent to which neuroanatomical variability associated with substance involvement reflects pre-existing risk and/or consequences of substance exposure remains poorly understood. In the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, we identify associations between global and regional differences in brain structure and early substance use initiation (i.e.

Cross-ancestry genetic investigation of schizophrenia, cannabis use disorder, and tobacco smoking.

Individuals with schizophrenia frequently experience co-occurring substance use, including tobacco smoking and heavy cannabis use, and substance use disorders. There is interest in understanding the extent to which these relationships are causal, and to what extent shared genetic factors play a role. We explored the relationships between schizophrenia (Scz), cannabis use disorder (CanUD), and ever-regular tobacco smoking (Smk) using the largest available genome-wide studies of these phenotypes in individuals of African and European ancestries.

Associations Between Polygenic Scores for Cognitive and Non-cognitive Factors of Educational Attainment and Measures of Behavior, Psychopathology, and Neuroimaging in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

Background: Both cognitive and non-cognitive (e.g., traits like curiosity) factors are critical for social and emotional functioning and independently predict educational attainment.

Identification of a convergent spinal neuron population that encodes itch.

Itch is a protective sensation that drives scratching. Although specific cell types have been proposed to underlie itch, the neural circuit basis for itch remains unclear. Here, we used two-photon Ca imaging of the dorsal horn to visualize the neuronal populations that are activated by itch-inducing agents.

Prenatal cannabis exposure is associated with localized brain differences that partially mediate associations with increased adolescent psychopathology.

Prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) is associated with mental health problems, but the neurobiological mechanisms remain unknown. We find that PCE is associated with localized differences across neuroimaging metrics that longitudinally mediate associations with mental health in adolescence (n=9,322-10,186). Differences in brain development may contribute to PCE-related variability in adolescent mental health.

Alcohol use and grey matter structure: Disentangling predispositional and causal contributions in human studies.

Alcohol use is a growing global health concern and economic burden. Alcohol involvement (i.e.

Reliability of diurnal salivary cortisol metrics: A meta-analysis and investigation in two independent samples.

Stress-induced dysregulation of diurnal cortisol is a cornerstone of stress-disease theories; however, observed associations between cortisol, stress, and health have been inconsistent. The reliability of diurnal cortisol features may contribute to these equivocal findings. Our meta-analysis (5 diurnal features from 11 studies; total participant n = 3307) and investigation (15 diurnal cortisol features) in 2 independent studies (St.

Multivariate genome-wide association meta-analysis of over 1 million subjects identifies loci underlying multiple substance use disorders.

Genetic liability to substance use disorders can be parsed into loci that confer general or substance-specific addiction risk. We report a multivariate genome-wide association meta-analysis that disaggregates general and substance-specific loci for published summary statistics of problematic alcohol use, problematic tobacco use, cannabis use disorder, and opioid use disorder in a sample of individuals of European descent and African descent. Nineteen independent SNPs were genome-wide significant ( < 5e-8) for the general addiction risk factor (), which showed high polygenicity.

A Phenome-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) of Late Onset Alzheimer Disease Genetic Risk in Children of European Ancestry at Middle Childhood: Results from the ABCD Study.

Genetic risk for Late Onset Alzheimer Disease (AD) has been associated with lower cognition and smaller hippocampal volume in healthy young adults. However, whether these and other associations are present during childhood remains unclear. Using data from 5556 genomically-confirmed European ancestry youth who completed the baseline session of the ongoing the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®), our phenome-wide association study estimating associations between four indices of genetic risk for late-onset AD (i.

Multi-omics cannot replace sample size in genome-wide association studies.

The integration of multi-omics information (e.g., epigenetics and transcriptomics) can be useful for interpreting findings from genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

Phenome-wide Investigation of Behavioral, Environmental, and Neural Associations with Cross-Disorder Genetic Liability in Youth of European Ancestry.

Etiologic insights into psychopathology may be gained by using hypothesis-free methods to identify associations between genetic risk for broad psychopathology and phenotypes measured during adolescence, including both markers of child psychopathology and intermediate phenotypes such as neural structure that may link genetic risk with outcomes. We conducted a phenome-wide association study (phenotype n=1,269-1,694) of polygenic risk scores (PRS) for broad spectrum psychopathology (i.e.

Characterizing Alcohol Expectancies in the ABCD Study: Associations with Sociodemographic Factors, the Immediate Social Environment, and Genetic Propensities.

Alcohol expectancies (AEs) are associated with likelihood of alcohol initiation and subsequent alcohol use disorders. It is unclear whether genetic predisposition to alcohol use and/or related traits contributes to shaping how one expects to feel when drinking alcohol. We used the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study to examine associations between genetic propensities (i.

Moderation effects in personality disorder research.

Tests of statistical interactions (or tests of moderation effects) in personality disorder research are a common way for researchers to examine nuanced hypotheses relevant to personality pathology. However, the nature of statistical interactions makes them difficult to reliably detect in many research scenarios. The present study used a flexible, simulation-based approach to estimate statistical power to detect trait-by-trait interactions common to psychopathy research using the Triarchic model of Psychopathy and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory.

Protocol for a machine learning algorithm predicting depressive disorders using the T1w/T2w ratio.

The T1w/T2w ratio is a novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measure that is thought to be sensitive to cortical myelin. Using this novel measure requires developing novel pipelines for the data quality assurance, data analysis, and validation of the findings in order to apply the T1w/T2w ratio for classification of disorders associated with the changes in the myelin levels. In this article, we provide a detailed description of such a pipeline as well as the reference to the scripts used in our recent report that applied the T1w/T2w ratio and machine learning to classify individuals with depressive disorders from healthy controls.