Subregional hypothalamic volumes associate with childhood conduct problems in healthy adults.

Abstract

Childhood conduct problems have been linked to alterations in frontolimbic circuits, yet the contribution of hypothalamic subregions remains largely unexplored. This study examined whether hypothalamic morphometry relates to conduct problems in 600 healthy young adults from the Human Connectome Project (206 with and 394 without conduct problems). Volumes of twelve hypothalamic subregions were extracted from structural MRI using the automated FreeSurfer segmentation. Group differences were assessed with linear models, and multivariable associations were tested with logistic regression adjusted for age, sex, and intracranial volume. Influential observations were screened using Cook's distance, and predictor importance was further evaluated through logistic LASSO regression with tenfold cross-validation. Individuals with a history of conduct problems showed larger volumes in anterior and tubular hypothalamic subregions-specifically the left anterior-inferior, left tubular-inferior, and right tubular-superior-while an initial inverse association in the left posterior subregion was no longer significant after excluding influential cases. These findings identify distinct hypothalamic subregions as structural correlates of early behavioral dysregulation and suggest that hypothalamic morphometry may reflect neurodevelopmental adaptations associated with childhood conduct problems.