Manifold learning uncovers nonlinear interactions between the adolescent brain and environment that predict emotional and behavioral problems
Manifold learning uncovers nonlinear interactions between the adolescent brain and environment that predict emotional and behavioral problems

Manifold learning uncovers nonlinear interactions between the adolescent brain and environment that predict emotional and behavioral problems

Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging. 2024 Jul 13:S2451-9022(24)00173-3. doi: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.07.001. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: To progress adolescent mental health research beyond our present achievements – a complex account of brain and environmental risk factors without understanding neurobiological embedding in the environment – we need methods to unveil relationships between the developing brain and real-world environmental experiences.

METHODS: We investigated associations among brain function, environments, and emotional and behavioral problems using participants from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (N=2,401 female). We applied manifold learning, a promising technique for uncovering latent structure from high-dimensional biomedical data like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Specifically, we developed exogenous PHATE (E-PHATE) to model brain-environment interactions. We used E-PHATE embeddings of participants’ brain activation during emotional and cognitive processing to predict individual differences in cognition and emotional and behavioral problems, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

RESULTS: E-PHATE embeddings of participants’ brain activation and environments at baseline show moderate-to-large associations with total, externalizing, and internalizing problems at baseline, across several subcortical regions and large-scale cortical networks, relative to the zero-to-small effects achieved by voxel or PHATE methods. E-PHATE embeddings of the brain and environment at baseline also relate to emotional and behavioral problems two years later. These longitudinal predictions show a consistent, moderate effect in the frontoparietal and attention networks.

CONCLUSIONS: Adolescent brain’s embedding in the environment yields enriched insight into emotional and behavioral problems. Using E-PHATE, we demonstrate how the harmonization of cutting-edge computational methods with longstanding developmental theories advances detection and prediction of adolescent emotional and behavioral problems.

PMID:39009136 | DOI:10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.07.001