Testing whether the relations between sex and psychopathology are accounted for by structural morphometry in ABCD.

Abstract

Sex differences in psychopathology are well-established, with females demonstrating higher rates of internalizing (INT) psychopathology and males demonstrating higher rates of externalizing (EXT) psychopathology. Using two waves of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (N = 6,778 at each wave), the current study tested whether the relations between sex and psychopathology might be accounted for by structural brain differences. In general, we found robust, relatively consistent relations between sex and structural morphometry across waves. Relatively few morphometric brain variables were significantly related to INT or EXT across waves, however, with very small effect sizes when present. Next, we tested the extent to which each morphometric brain variable could account for the associations of sex with INT and EXT psychopathology. We found a total of 26 brain regions that accounted for significant portions of the associations between sex and psychopathology across both waves (almost all related to EXT), although the effects present were very small. The current evidence suggests that in children aged 9-12, multiple whole-brain and regional brain variables appear to statistically account for small portions of the sex-psychopathology links, especially for externalizing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).