Longitudinally stable, brain-based predictive models mediate the relationships between childhood cognition and socio-demographic, psychological and genetic factors

Cognitive abilities are one of the major transdiagnostic domains in the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). Following RDoC's integrative approach, we aimed to develop brain-based predictive models for cognitive abilities that (a) are developmentally stable over years during adolescence and (b) account for the relationships between cognitive abilities and socio-demographic, psychological and genetic factors. For this, we leveraged the unique power of the large-scale, longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (n similar to 11 k) and combined MRI data across modalities (task-fMRI from three tasks: resting-state fMRI, structural MRI and DTI) using machine-learning. Our brain-based, predictive models for cognitive abilities were stable across 2 years during young adolescence and generalisable to different sites, partially predicting childhood cognition at around 20% of the variance. Moreover, our use of `opportunistic stacking' allowed the model to handle missing values, reducing the exclusion from around 80% to around 5% of the data. We found fronto-parietal networks during a working-memory task to drive childhood-cognition prediction. The brain-based, predictive models significantly, albeit partially, accounted for variance in childhood cognition due to (1) key socio-demographic and psychological factors (proportion mediated = 18.65% [17.29%-20.12%]) and (2) genetic variation, as reflected by the polygenic score of cognition (proportion mediated = 15.6% [11%-20.7%]). Thus, our brain-based predictive models for cognitive abilities facilitate the development of a robust, transdiagnostic research tool for cognition at the neural level in keeping with the RDoC's integrative framework.

Automated summary

This study aimed to develop brain-based predictive models for stable cognitive abilities during adolescence while accounting for the relationships between cognitive abilities and socio-demographic, psychological, and genetic factors. The models showed stability and generalizability, partially explaining variance in childhood cognition. The use of opportunistic stacking reduced data exclusion due to missing values. Fronto-parietal networks were found to drive childhood cognition prediction. The models also partially accounted for variance in childhood cognition due to socio-demographic, psychological, and genetic factors.