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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neuroimaging
Sec. Population Neuroimaging
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnimg.2024.1390409

Adolescent Brain Maturation Associated with Environmental Factors: A Multivariate Analysis

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Tri-Institutional Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Atlanta, United States
  • 2 Department of Computer Science, College of Arts and Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Colorado, United States
  • 3 Neuroscience Institute, College of Arts and Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Human adolescence marks a crucial phase of extensive brain development, highly susceptible to environmental influences. Employing brain age estimation to assess individual brain aging, we categorized individuals (N=7435, aged 9-10 years old) from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort into groups exhibiting either accelerated or delayed brain maturation, where the accelerated group also displayed increased cognitive performance compared to their delayed counterparts. A 4-way multi-set canonical correlation analysis integrating three modalities of brain metrics (gray matter density, brain morphological measures, and functional network connectivity) with nine environmental factors unveiled a significant 4-way canonical correlation between linked patterns of neural features, air pollution, area crime, and population density. Correlations among the three brain modalities were notably strong (ranging from 0.65 to 0.77), linking reduced gray matter density in the middle temporal gyrus and precuneus to decreased volumes in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex paired with increased cortical thickness in the right supramarginal and bilateral occipital regions, as well as increased functional connectivity in occipital sub-regions. These specific brain characteristics were significantly more pronounced in the accelerated brain aging group compared to the delayed group. Additionally, these brain regions exhibited significant associations with air pollution, area crime, and population density, where lower air pollution and higher area crime and population density were correlated to brain variations more prominently in the accelerated brain aging group.

    Keywords: adolescence, Brain Development, multivariate, Multi-set Canonical Correlation Analysis, structural MRI, functional MRI, environmental factors

    Received: 23 Feb 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ray, Jensen, Suresh, Thapaliya, Sapkota, Farahdel, Fu, Chen, Calhoun and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Bhaskar Ray, Tri-Institutional Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, Atlanta, United States

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