Replicability of structural brain alterations associated with general psychopathology: evidence from a population-representative birth cohort | 2019
Romer, A. L., Knodt, A. R., Sison, ... Show all » M., Ireland, D., Ramrakha, S., Poulton, R., Keenan, R., Melzer, T. R., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Hariri, A. R. « Hide
Molecular Psychiatry, 2019, .
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-019-0621-z
Our ref: RO726
Show abstract » Transdiagnostic research has identified a general psychopathology factor – often called the ‘p’
factor – that accounts for shared liability to internalizing, externalizing, and thought disorders in
diverse samples. It has been argued that the p factor may reflect dysfunctional thinking present
in serious mental illness. In support of this, we previously used a theory-free, data-driven
multimodal neuroimaging approach to find that higher p factor scores are associated with
structural deficits within a cerebello-thalamo-cortical circuit (CTCC) and visual association
cortex, both of which are important for monitoring and coordinating information processing in
the service of executive control. Here we attempt to replicate these associations by conducting
region-of-interest analyses of the CTCC and visual association cortex using data from 831
members of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, a five-decade
longitudinal study of a population-representative birth cohort now 45 years old. We further
sought to replicate a more recent report that p factor scores can be predicted by patterns of
distributed cerebellar morphology as estimated through independent component analysis. We
successfully replicated associations between higher p factor scores and both reduced grey
matter volume of the visual association cortex and fractional anisotropy of pontine white
matter pathways within the CTCC. In contrast, we failed to replicate prior associations between
cerebellar structure and p factor scores. Collectively, our findings encourage further focus on
the CTCC and visual association cortex as core neural substrates and potential biomarkers of
transdiagnostic risk for mental illness.
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