Poster #20 - Prospective Association between Childhood Family Income and Adult Surface Area

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Childhood socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) has been associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes in adulthood (Fuller-Rowell, Curtis, Chae, & Ryff, 2018; Kim, Evans, Chen, Miller, & Seeman, 2018). Variations in brain development, such as lower surface area, have been associated with experiencing childhood socioeconomic disadvantage and have been hypothesized to be a potential neurobiological mechanism of the relationship between SED and the negative sequelae in adulthood (Johnson, Riis, & Noble, 2016). SED, as measured by family income, has been found to have a positive association with brain surface area in the bilateral inferior frontal, cingulate, insula, and inferior temporal regions as well as the right superior frontal and precuneus cortex. However, this study used a wide age range (3-20) and only measured SED at one timepoint and therefore little is known about the timing of exposure to childhood SED (Noble et al., 2015). Multi-timepoint, longitudinal designs of the association between SED and brain development have the potential to extend our knowledge about certain timepoints in development which SED may have a particularly strong association with brain development.
We specifically sought to test the prospective association between childhood SED (as measured by income-to-needs ratio) and adult cortical surface area using a multi-timepoint, longitudinal design. Forty-seven adults (mean age = 23.68) participated in a longitudinal study in which assessments of family income were measured at age 9 and in adulthood. Structural MRI were acquired in adulthood as well as adult socioeconomic information. Structural images were processed with Freesurfer’s ‘recon-all’ pipeline to reconstruct cortical surfaces. We examined the prospective association between childhood INR (measured at age 9) and adult surface area using a vertex-wise multiple regression with childhood INR as a predictor and participant age, sex, ethnicity, and adult INR as covariates. Further, we examine the association between adult INR and adult surface area using a vertex-wise multiple regression with adult INR as the predictor and age, sex, and ethnicity as covariates and all analyses were thresholded at p < 0.05 FWE corrected.
Results from the vertex-wise multiple regression indicated a positive association between childhood INR and adult surface area (controlling for adult INR) in several regions including the rostral middle frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, rostral and caudal anterior cingulate gyrus, precentral, and superior parietal gyrus (see Figure 1). For the analysis of adult INR, there was no region of surface area that was significantly associated with adult INR. The findings suggest a prospective association between childhood INR and adult surface area. The analysis suggests the associations between INR and surface area may be specific to childhood INR as there was no significant association between adult INR and surface area. These findings highlight middle childhood as a potential window in which the association between SED and surface area is robust and indicate this relationship above and beyond adult socioeconomic position. Further, the results suggest associations between childhood SED and surface area are evident into adulthood and efforts to ameliorate this long-lasting association should focus on middle childhood for intervention.

Authors

• Alexander Dufford, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Pilyoung Kim, University of Denver
  Non-Presenting Author

• Gary W. Evans, Cornell University
  Non-Presenting Author

• James Edward Swain, Stony Brook University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Israel Liberzon, University of Michigan
  Non-Presenting Author