Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
New researchInternalizing and Externalizing Symptoms Are Associated With Different Trajectories of Cortical Development During Late Childhood
Section snippets
Participants and Procedure
Participants were from the Families and Childhood Transitions Study (FACTS), who were recruited from lower socioeconomic areas in Melbourne, Australia, as described in detail elsewhere.25 The study involved two waves of data collection, both involving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, and self- and parent-report questionnaires of child internalizing/externalizing symptoms. Exclusion criteria included MRI contraindications, history of head trauma or loss of consciousness, history of
Results
Table S1 (available online) reports bivariate correlations between symptom measures and demographics.
Repeated-measures analysis of variance showed main effects of time for parent-report externalizing (p < .001) and child-report depressive symptoms (p = .020), whereby symptoms decreased over time. There was no effect of time for parent-report internalizing or child-report anxiety symptoms (p > .05), and no main effects of sex, or time-by-sex interactions for any symptom type (p > .05). Although
Discussion
During a discrete period in late childhood (ie, age 8−10 years), we found evidence for distinct neurodevelopmental correlates of changes in parent-reported internalizing compared to externalizing symptoms. Although increases in both symptom types over time were associated with reduced cortical thinning, increases in internalizing symptoms over time were associated with reduced thinning in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex, whereas increases in externalizing symptoms over time were associated
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Cited by (0)
This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant ID DP130103551). Dr. Whittle is supported by an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (ID: 1125504). The funding sources had no involvement in the study design, the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit the article for publication.
The authors thank the Royal Children’s Hospital Medical Imaging staff, for their assistance and expertise in the collection of the MRI data included in this study, Sally Richmond, PhD, Camille Deane, PhD, and Isabel Zwaan, Research Master, of the University of Melbourne, for their contribution to image processing.
Disclosure: Drs. Whittle, Vijayakumar, Simmons, and Allen have reported no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.