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BACKGROUND: Externalizing and internalizing behaviors contribute to clinical impairment in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). Although associations between externalizing or internalizing behaviors and cortico-amygdalar connectivity have been found in clinical and non-clinical pediatric samples, no previous study has examined whether similar shared associations are present across children with different NDDs. METHODS: Multi-modal neuroimaging and behavioral data from the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Disorders (POND) Network were used. POND participants aged 6-18 years with a primary diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as typically developing children (TDC) with T1-weighted, resting-state fMRI or diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) and parent-report Child Behavioral Checklist (CBCL) data available, were analyzed (total n = 346). Associations between externalizing or internalizing behavior and cortico-amygdalar structural and functional connectivity indices were examined using linear regressions, controlling for age, gender, and image-modality specific covariates. Behavior-by-diagnosis interaction effects were also examined. RESULTS: No significant linear associations (or diagnosis-by-behavior interaction effects) were found between CBCL-measured externalizing or internalizing behaviors and any of the connectivity indices examined. Post-hoc bootstrapping analyses indicated stability and reliability of these null results. CONCLUSIONS: The current study provides evidence towards an absence of a shared linear relationship between internalizing or externalizing behaviors and cortico-amygdalar connectivity properties across a transdiagnostic sample of children with different primary NDD diagnoses and TDC. Different methodological approaches, including incorporation of multi-dimensional behavioral data (e.g., task-based fMRI) or clustering approaches may be needed to clarify complex brain-behavior relationships relevant to externalizing/internalizing behaviors in heterogeneous clinical NDD populations.

Original publication

DOI

10.1007/s00429-022-02483-0

Type

Journal article

Journal

Brain Struct Funct

Publication Date

25/04/2022

Keywords

Brain-behavior relationships, Functional connectivity, Multi-modal neuroimaging, Neurodevelopmental disorders, Structural covariance, White matter connectivity