Individual differences in internalizing symptoms in late childhood: A variance decomposition into cortical thickness, genetic and environmental differences

Abstract

The brain undergoes extensive development during late childhood and early adolescence. Cortical thinning is a prominent feature of this development, and some researchers have suggested that differences in cortical thickness may be related to internalizing symptoms, which typically increase during the same period. However, research has yielded inconclusive results. We utilized a new method that estimates the combined effect of individual differences in vertex-wise cortical thickness on internalizing symptoms. This approach allows for many small effects to be distributed across the cortex and avoids the necessity of correcting for multiple tests. Using a sample of 8763 children aged 8.9 to 11.1 from the ABCD study, we decomposed the total variation in caregiver-reported internalizing symptoms into differences in cortical thickness, additive genetics, and shared family environmental factors and unique environmental factors. Our results indicated that individual differences in cortical thickness accounted for less than 0.5% of the variation in internalizing symptoms. In contrast, the analysis revealed a substantial effect of additive genetics and family environmental factors on the different components of internalizing symptoms, ranging from 06% to 48% and from 0% to 34%, respectively. Overall, while this study found a minimal association between cortical thickness and internalizing symptoms, additive genetics, and familial environmental factors appear to be of importance for describing differences in internalizing symptoms in late childhood.

Research Highlights

• We utilized a new method for modelling the total contribution of vertex-wise individual differences in cortical thickness to internalizing symptoms in late childhood.
• The total contribution of individual differences in cortical thickness accounted for <0.5% of the variance in internalizing symptoms.
• Additive genetics and shared family environmental variation accounted for 17% and 34% of the variance in internalizing symptoms, respectively.
• Our results suggest that cortical thickness is not an important indicator for internalizing symptoms in childhood, whereas genetic and environmental differences have a substantial impact.