2026/05/13 by Valerie Karl, Dani Beck, Lorenza Dall'Aglio +8 · 1 voice
Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications #Mental Health Research Topics #Stress Responses and Cortisol
paper · doi:10.31234/osf.io/ksy2n_v1
openalex publication_date 2026/05/13 · openalex created_date 2026/05/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Background: Adolescence is a developmental period involving ongoing white matter (WM) maturation and rising risk for psychopathology. This risk is particularly elevated among youth whose parents have mental health problems. Methods: Leveraging longitudinal data from three waves of the community-based Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 6,581, Nobservations = 16, 271, mean ageTP 1 = 10.2, mean ageTP 2 = 12.0 , mean ageTP 3 = 14.2), we employed random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) to disentangle stable between-person differences from time-varying within-person changes. We examined prospective and bidirectional associations between youth general psychopathology and diffusion metrics, including fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) in the uncinate fasciculus (UF), superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), and corpus callosum (CC). We also tested whether parental psychopathology moderated these associations. Results: Preregistered analyses showed no significant between-person or within-person associations between parent-reported youth psychopathology and WM microstructure, nor evidence of moderation by parental psychopathology. In exploratory analyses using youth self-reports, SLF and CC FA were negatively associated with psychopathology at the between-person level, but positively associated at the within-person level during early adolescence. Additionally, SLF and CC MD were negatively associated with self-reported psychopathology on the within-person level during early adolescence, with this association persisting into mid-adolescence for the CC. Parental psychopathology moderated the within-person association between CC MD and self-reported youth psychopathology.Conclusion: Overall, the findings did not support hypothesized prospective and bidirectional associations between parent-reported youth psychopathology and WM microstructure, nor moderation by parental psychopathology. Instead, our findings highlight limitations of tract-specific explanations for general psychopathology in at-risk youth, informant discrepancies, and the importance of separating between- and within-person effects.