The Origins of Preadolescent Risk for Psychiatric Disorders in Early Childhood Brain Development

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Abstract It has been hypothesized for years that most psychiatric disorders are the result of abnormal trajectories of early childhood brain development and a major priority for NIMH is to better understand how risk for psychiatric disorders unfold in childhood, to inform early intervention strategies that prevent or mitigate risk and illness severity. The UNC Early Brain Development Study is a longitudinal study that has followed children, enrolled prenatally, with imaging and developmental assessments at birth and at ages 1, 2 4, and 6 years. Children from this cohort are now reaching pre-adolescence, a period in which cognitive and behavioral abnormalities associated with psychiatric disease, including executive function, attention, and anxiety, are emerging. Very little is currently known about the relationship between brain structure and development and risk phenotypes in pre-adolescence; this represents is a major gap in our knowledge and a critical need for study. We propose to follow 446 children in our longitudinal cohort at ages 8 and 10 years of age. MRIs, including structural, diffusion tensor, and resting state functional imaging, will be performed. Cognitive development and behavioral development will be assessed, with a focus on the phenotypes of executive function, attention, and anxiety, consistent with RDoC constructs and important for psychiatric disorder risk. Knowledge gained in this study will improve our basic understanding of human brain development in childhood, allow us to delineate childhood predictors of risk phenotypes in late childhood, and ultimately help target periods of childhood development for early intervention. Relevance New knowledge gained in this study will provide a dramatically improved framework for understanding childhood brain development and its relationship to cognitive and behavioral outcomes in late childhood, and to risk for subsequent psychiatric disorders.