tsalo
commented
3 years ago Would you mind adding a bit of information about the necessary skills and tasks you could use help with in this project? It should make it easier for prospective collaborators to determine how and if they can contribute. Specifically, our new template has sections named "Tools and algorithms to be used", "Skills we could use help with", and "Link to analysis plan" (if you have been working on a more detailed plan than would fit in this issue).
avannucci
angielaird
richford
sarahechang123
jessicabartley
Data-driven early life adversity dimensions, functional connectivity, and change in internalizing and externalizing behaviors among children
Contributors
Alexis Brieant, Jack Lovell, Hajer Nakua, & Anna Vannucci
Research Question(s)
What is the factor structure of early life adversity in the ABCD sample at baseline?
What is the relationship between early life adversity dimensions and whole-brain resting state functional connectivity? 2a. Which experience-sensitive functional connections are common across all adversity dimensions? 2b. Which experience-sensitive functional connections are unique to specific adversity dimensions?
How do associations between early life adversity dimensions and experience-sensitive functional connectivity relate to changes in internalizing and externalizing behaviors after one year?
Description
Rationale
This project seeks to examine the relationships among early life adversity dimensions, neural alterations in whole-brain functional connectivity, and changes in psychopathology symptoms in a large, demographically diverse sample of children based in the U.S. (i.e., ABCD, baseline ages = 9-11). Several dimensions of early life adversity have been proposed and identified in relatively small samples that have a limited range of exposures (e.g., violence exposure, poverty) (Cohodes et al., 2020; Ellis et al., 2009; McLaughlin & Sheridan, 2016; Sheridan et al., 2020). There is considerable ongoing debate about the underlying structure of early life adversity dimensions (McLaughlin et al., 2020; Smith & Pollak, 2020). Moreover, little is known about the relationship between early life adversity and whole-brain resting state functional connectivity, with the majority of studies focusing on targeted neural circuits (e.g., Fareri et al., 2017; Gee et al., 2013; Peverill et al., 2019; Ramphal et al., 2020) or subcortical seed-based functional connectivity (e.g., Barch et al., 2016; Cheng et al., 2020). Further, alterations of functional connectivity linked to early life adversity have been found to predict changes in externalizing (Barch et al. 2018) and internalizing (Gur et al. 2019) behavior; however, these initial studies focused on a narrow range of specific regions or networks. Investigating whole-brain functional connectivity provides an opportunity to assess whether dimensions of early life adversity and psychopathology have widespread implications for brain function in children. Further, examining the relationship between these three constructs can maximize the theoretical and clinical impact of early risk factors linked to developing psychopathology. Harnessing the power of the ABCD sample and predictive modeling techniques will further allow us to evaluate the generalizability of the observed relationships.
Potential Analyses and Questions
Early life adversity dimensions: principal components analysis (PCA) on all the early adversity variables
Early life adversity dimensions and whole-brain functional connectivity: connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) using ridge regression with functional connectivity estimates predicting dimension scores OR canonical correlation analysis (CCA) with adversity dimensions and functional connectivity estimates; Benefits of both CCA and CPM is that a single score will be generated for question, but CCA may be harder to interpret than CPM results 2a. What do you think would be effective approaches to qualitatively evaluate commonalities and differences among experience-sensitive connectomes across dimensions?
Early life adversity dimensions, functional connectivity, and change in internalizing and externalizing problems over one year: Multilevel model using a PLS path model analysis OR Structural equation model; causal mediation model: adversity dimension ⇒ experience sensitive network ⇒ within-person change in internalizing and externalizing problems |
ReproNim: Given that this sample is large, it is possible to find many relationships that may not be meaningful. We would like to use resampling techniques to assess the stability and generalizability of the results. What predictive modeling / reproNim method(s) is most appropriate (train-test set, bagging, cross-validation, split-half resampling)?
Publishing Questions
We would like to do a four-person first authorship because, as a group, we feel that we have equally contributed to the conceptualization of this project and will continue to contribute equally to the data cleaning, data analysis, and write-up of results as a manuscript. Is this possible? What are your recommendations here?
We are confused about who the co-authors and senior authorship would be for this manuscript. We want to iron out these details early on. 2a. Will the ABCD-ReproNim course team be on the manuscript since you all are teaching us these skills and will be helping us with analyses? 2b. Should we invite our PIs?
We wondered about your recommendations for covering the cost of submitting / publishing an article in certain outlets (e.g. DCN, PNAS, etc.). 3a. Should we ask if our PIs can split the cost (although they may be hesitant since this project is not tied to their grants)? 3b. Should we just select journals that do not have submission/publication costs? 3c. Is there a funding mechanism within the ABCD-ReproNim course to cover these costs?
Suggested keywords/tags
early life adversity; functional connectivity; internalizing behaviors; externalizing behaviors