Poster #14 - Changes in Family Economic Conditions in Early Childhood Alter Adolescent Functional Connectivity Networks

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Introduction: The effects of poverty on development are most pronounced during the preschool years (Duncan, Yeung, Brooks-Gunn, & Smith, 1998) and fluctuations in economic conditions may be particularly detrimental (Blau, 1999, Duncan et al., 2010). Poverty is thought to negatively impact brain development, (Blair & Raver, 2016), but the precise effects are not clear. Resting state fMRI allows for the examination of intrinsic functional organization of the whole brain (Smith et al., 2013). In this study, we assessed network connectivity through a connectome-wide approach to better characterize how changes in economic conditions during early childhood influence intrinsic brain function in adolescence.

Hypothesis: Decreases in income-to-needs ratio from age 3 to 5 are associated with reduced functional connectivity in networks involved in cognitive functions.

Study Population: 115 adolescents (age 15-17; 45 males, 70 females) from the Detroit, Toledo, and Chicago subsamples of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Of note, 71% of the subsample experienced worsening economic hardship from ages 3 to 5.

Methods: To test our hypothesis, we examined income changes between ages 3-5 through an income-to-needs ratio change score based on total household income to U.S. poverty thresholds constructed from data collected at ages birth, 3, 5 and 15. Connectivity was examined using 8-minute resting functional MRI scans. These data were preprocessed using standard protocols in SPM12. Smoothed denoised images underwent motion artifact removal through ICA-AROMA (Pruim et al., 2015) and censoring (Power et al., 2014). Then functional connectomes of spatially-averaged time series from 264 ROIs placed across the whole brain were generated for each subject. These ROIs were organized into fourteen large-scale brain networks derived from Power et al’s (2011) network parcellation. To examine intrinsic network interrelationships, a network contingency analysis (NCA; Sripada et al., 2014) was used. Importantly, NCA controls for multiple comparisons by applying a single statistical test for each pair of networks.

Results: Adolescents whose economic circumstances worsened between ages 3 to 5 had decreased functional connectivity between the Cerebellar Network and the Sensory Somatomotor Hand Network (p = 0.021, false discovery rate-corrected), even after controlling for income-to-needs ratio at birth and age 15, as well as gender, race and subject motion while being scanned.

Conclusions: Worsening family economic conditions during early childhood was associated with reduced functional connectivity between the cerebellar network and the sensory somatomotor hand network. Previous research suggests that the cerebellum is important for cognitive function (Buckner, 2013) and has an important role in integrating multisensory information from the sensory cortices (Kern, 2002). Disruptions in this integration are associated with ADHD (Watemberg, 2007) and predict worse outcomes in adolescence (Goetz et al., 2014). A structural equation model will determine if this network pair association relates to ADHD symptoms at age 15. These findings suggest that worsening economic hardship during the preschool years decreases functional brain communication in these regions involved in cognitive function.

Authors

• Jaime Munoz-Velazquez, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author

• Leigh Gayle Goetschius, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Colter Mitchell, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Chandra Sekhar Sripada, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Mike Angstadt, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sara McLanahan, Princeton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University Teachers College
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nestor L. Lopez-Duran, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Luke W. Hyde, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christopher Stephen Monk, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
  Non-Presenting Author