Familial risk for depression moderates neural circuitry in healthy preadolescents to predict adolescent depression symptoms in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study

Background

There is an imminent need to identify neural markers during preadolescence that are linked to developing depression during adolescence, especially among youth at elevated familial risk. However, longitudinal studies remain scarce and exhibit mixed findings. Here we aimed to elucidate functional connectivity (FC) patterns among preadolescents that interact with familial depression risk to predict depression two years later.

Methods

9–10 year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study were classified as healthy (i.e., no lifetime psychiatric diagnoses) at high familial risk for depression (HR; n=559) or at low familial risk for psychopathology (LR; n=1203). Whole-brain seed-to-voxel resting-state FC patterns with the amygdala, putamen, nucleus accumbens, and caudate were calculated. Multi-level, mixed-effects regression analyses were conducted to test whether FC at ages 9–10 interacted with familial risk to predict depression symptoms at ages 11–12.

Results

HR youth demonstrated stronger associations between preadolescent FC and adolescent depression symptoms (ps<0.001) as compared to LR youth (ps>0.001), primarily among amygdala/striatal FC with visual and sensory/somatomotor networks.

Conclusions

Preadolescent amygdala and striatal FC may be useful biomarkers of adolescent-onset depression, particularly for youth with family histories of depression. This research may point to neurobiologically-informed approaches to prevention and intervention for depression in adolescents.