TY - JOUR

T1 - Stability of associations between neuroticism and microstructural asymmetry of the cingulum during late childhood and adolescence

T2 - Insights from a longitudinal study with up to 11 waves

AU - Plachti, Anna

AU - Baaré, William F.C.

AU - Johansen, Louise Baruël

AU - Thompson, Wesley K.

AU - Siebner, Hartwig R.

AU - Madsen, Kathrine Skak

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Human Brain Mapping published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Adolescence is characterized by significant brain development and marks a period of the life span with an increased incidence of mood disorders, especially in females. The risk of developing mood disorders is also higher in individuals scoring high on neuroticism, a personality trait characterized by a tendency to experience negative and anxious emotions. We previously found in a cross-sectional study that neuroticism is associated with microstructural left–right asymmetry of the fronto-limbic white matter involved in emotional processing, with opposite effects in female and male adolescents. We now have extended this work collecting longitudinal data in 76 typically developing children and adolescents aged 7–18 years, including repeated MRI sampling up to 11 times. This enabled us, for the first time, to address the critical question, whether the association between neuroticism and frontal-limbic white matter asymmetry changes or remains stable across late childhood and adolescence. Neuroticism was assessed up to four times and showed good intraindividual stability and did not significantly change with age. Conforming our cross-sectional results, females scoring high on neuroticism displayed increased left–right cingulum fractional anisotropy (FA), while males showed decreased left–right cingulum FA asymmetry. Despite ongoing age-related increases in FA in cingulum, the association between neuroticism and cingulum FA asymmetry was already expressed in females in late childhood and remained stable across adolescence. In males, the association appeared to become more prominent during adolescence. Future longitudinal studies need to cover an earlier age span to elucidate the time point at which the relationship between neuroticism and cingulum FA asymmetry arises.

AB - Adolescence is characterized by significant brain development and marks a period of the life span with an increased incidence of mood disorders, especially in females. The risk of developing mood disorders is also higher in individuals scoring high on neuroticism, a personality trait characterized by a tendency to experience negative and anxious emotions. We previously found in a cross-sectional study that neuroticism is associated with microstructural left–right asymmetry of the fronto-limbic white matter involved in emotional processing, with opposite effects in female and male adolescents. We now have extended this work collecting longitudinal data in 76 typically developing children and adolescents aged 7–18 years, including repeated MRI sampling up to 11 times. This enabled us, for the first time, to address the critical question, whether the association between neuroticism and frontal-limbic white matter asymmetry changes or remains stable across late childhood and adolescence. Neuroticism was assessed up to four times and showed good intraindividual stability and did not significantly change with age. Conforming our cross-sectional results, females scoring high on neuroticism displayed increased left–right cingulum fractional anisotropy (FA), while males showed decreased left–right cingulum FA asymmetry. Despite ongoing age-related increases in FA in cingulum, the association between neuroticism and cingulum FA asymmetry was already expressed in females in late childhood and remained stable across adolescence. In males, the association appeared to become more prominent during adolescence. Future longitudinal studies need to cover an earlier age span to elucidate the time point at which the relationship between neuroticism and cingulum FA asymmetry arises.

KW - adolescence

KW - cingulum asymmetry

KW - DTI

KW - fractional anisotropy

KW - neuroticism

KW - sex differences

U2 - 10.1002/hbm.26157

DO - 10.1002/hbm.26157

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 36426846

AN - SCOPUS:85142660011

VL - 44

SP - 1548

EP - 1564

JO - Human Brain Mapping

JF - Human Brain Mapping

SN - 1065-9471

IS - 4

ER -