Exploring The Interaction Of Brain Functional Network With Cognition,Emotion,Behavior And Environment Based On Community Data

The current categorical psychiatric diagnosis system,which relies on superficial signs and symptoms,has been criticized for high comorbidity and heterogeneity within diagnoses,leading to questions about its reliability and validity.Many researchers are working on integrating psychopathology with neuroscience,genetics,and cognitive science to construct a new framework of psychiatric classification or propel dimensional approaches to replace categorical classification methods.Neuroscience is playing an increasingly prominent role in the development of psychology and psychopathology,especially in the demand for seeking a dimensional research methodology for transdiagnostic studies.Besides,community-based data,reflecting the natural distribution of mental illnesses,is crucial for conducting a dimensional study aimed at exploring the latent brain-behavior relation across psychiatric disorders.Studies across different psychiatric disorders have indicated that the syndromes share some physiological mechanisms in common as their basis.On the other hand,an increasing number of studies have suggested that the development of individual behavior is shaped not only by brain and genes,but also by environmental factors such as childhood socio-economic status and parenting styles.The influence of brain-environment interactions on the growth of youth may provide guidance for our parenting strategies.A multivariate statistical method(partial least squares regression)was applied to seek associated latent pattern pairs from the whole brain resting-state functional connectivities and comprehensive phenotypic measures including behavioral,cognition and emotional assessments in a community-based sample of 699 subjects.Five psychiatric disorder groups and a healthy group were selected from those 699 subjects,and multiple group comparisons between disease and healthy groups were employed to help interpret the latent pattern pairs identified in the previous regression.In addition,a moderation model was introduced to test the moderating effect of a certain environmental factor on the relation between the identified latent brain and phenotypic pattern.A set of 26 environmental scores including measurements of social status,parental stress,parenting style,and trauma were tested in turn as moderators.Four significant associated latent pattern pairs reflecting general behavioral problems,cognitive and language skills,externalizing problems,and social dysfunction were captured in our study.Each pair of latent patterns exhibited reasonable variations across different diagnostic groups.Though distinct from each other,all four latent brain activity patterns involved somatomotor network on their most important connectivities.Furthermore,many environmental factors were adjudged to moderate the brain-behavior relations in certain mental illness group,most of which are about parental stress and parenting styles.Our study dissociated four unique but overlapping latent pattern pairs across psychiatric diagnoses,providing brain functional evidence for the development of dimensional psychiatric classification system,as well as aiding our understanding of brain-behavior pathway.Additionally,moderating effects of environmental factors detected in our research suggest that a relaxed and intimate family and parental warmth are able to give children a better phenotypic outcome.