Longitudinal Associations between Peer and Family Relationships, Emotional Symptoms, and Regional Brain Volume across Adolescence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The period of adolescence brings with it a dynamic interaction between social context and behaviour, structural brain development, and anxiety and depressive symptoms. The rate of volumetric change in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and amygdala have been implicated in socioemotional development in adolescence; typically, there is thinning of grey matter volume (GMV) in the vmPFC and growth in the amygdala during this time. The directionality of the associations between social, emotional, and neuroanatomical factors has yet to be untangled, such as the degree to which social variables impact regional brain development, and vice versa. To add, the differences between sexes are still up for debate. In this study, longitudinal associations between peer problems, family support, socioeconomic stress, emotional symptoms, amygdala volume, and vmPFC GMV were investigated for both sexes using latent change score models. Data from a multi-site European study at baseline (mean (SD) age = 14.40 (0.38) years; % female = 53.19) and follow-up 2 (mean (SD) age = 18.90 (0.69) years, % female = 53.19) were used. Results revealed that peer problems did not predict emotional symptoms, rather they changed together over time. For males only, there was positive correlated change between vmPFC GMV, peer problems and emotional symptoms, indicating that slower vmPFC GMV thinning was associated with poorer social and emotional functioning. Additionally, greater family support at age 14 years was associated with slower growth of amygdala volume between ages 14 and 19 years for males; previous research has related slower amygdala growth to resilience to mental health disorders. The findings have extended understanding of mutual social, emotional and brain development, and avenues to protect mental health.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".