Assessing the utility of a novel cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) in two independent samples of early adolescents: Links with externalizing pathology

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 18; no. 9; p. e0291868
• Main Authors: Bounoua, Nadia, Church, Leah D, Matyi, Melanie A, Rudoler, Jeremy, Wieand, Kaleigh, Spielberg, Jeffrey M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 27.09.2023; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Adult; Adults; Analysis; Anatomy; Behavior; Biology and Life Sciences; Child; Child development; Cross-Sectional Studies; Data collection; Decision making; Delay; Delay Discounting; Female; Females; Health aspects; Human acts; Human behavior; Humans; Independent sample; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Neurobiology; Pathology; People and Places; Psychological aspects; Psychology, Pathological; Psychopathology; Research and Analysis Methods; Reward; Risk Factors; Risk taking; Signs and symptoms; Social Sciences; Teenagers; Valuation; Youth; United States; United States > US
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0291868

Delay discounting is a well-established risk factor for risky behaviors and the development of externalizing spectrum disorders. Building upon recent work that developed a novel cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) in adult samples, the objective of this study was to test whether the C-DD relates to delay discounting and subsequently externalizing pathology in adolescent samples. The current study used two samples: 9992 early adolescents participating in the ABCD study (Mage = 9.93 years old, 48.7% female), and 56 early adolescents recruited from the community (Mage = 12.27 years old, 55.4% female). Cortical thickness was estimated using the FreeSurfer standard pipeline, and the cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) was calculated based on procedures outlined by the initial validation study. All data are cross-sectional in nature. As expected, C-DD was positively related to delay discounting in the ABCD sample, even after accounting for age, biological sex, collection site and data quality indicators. Moreover, results showed that C-DD was discriminately associated with externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms in both samples of young adolescents. Findings replicate those found in adult samples, suggestive that C-DD may be a useful neuroanatomical marker of youth delay discounting. Replication of findings in other samples will be needed to determine whether C-DD has translational relevance to understanding externalizing psychopathology in adolescent samples.