Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (Apr 2023)

354 Unitary neural correlates of executive control in pediatric transdiagnostic psychopathology

  • Adam Kaminski,
  • Hua Xie,
  • Xiaozhen You,
  • Kathryn Flaharty,
  • Charlotte Jeppsen,
  • Sufang Li,
  • Junaid S. Merchant,
  • Madison M. Berl,
  • Lauren Kenworthy,
  • Chandan J. Vaidya

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2023.394
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7
pp. 104 – 105

Abstract

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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Childhood psychiatric symptoms are highly comorbid. Their co-occurrence and association with negative life outcomes is partially explained by deficits in executive control, or processes enabling self-regulation. Here, we test a novel executive neural target in three fMRI tasks and its relevance to shared psychopathology. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We studied 60 children [15 F/45 M; mean age (SD)=11.6 years (1.62)] with diverse diagnoses including attention deficit disorder (n=26) and autism spectrum disorder (n=22). We extracted a latent general factor of psychopathology using principal component analyses applied to parent-report Child Behavior Checklist syndrome scores. Subjects completed 3 executive control fMRI probes, tapping adaptive control, working memory, and inhibition. Correlational psychophysiological interaction (cPPI) analysis measured correlations between executive control-related modulations of activity in 414 network-affiliated parcels. We selected parcels exhibiting control-related cross-network correlations as well as control-related activity across all tasks and tested them for association with psychopathology. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: cPPI connectivity matrices were thresholded and graphs were identified using the Network-Based Statistic toolbox (p90th percentile PC) as well as control-related activation (>10% activated voxels; p DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results examine cross-network interactions between brain regions during 3 fMRI tasks and their role in explaining individual variation in psychopathology. As executive control links to both comorbidity and life outcomes, identifying the clinically-relevant neural correlates of controlled behavior may lead to transdiagnostic treatments.