Resilience and corpus callosum microstructure in adolescence.

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Adolescent Psychology
• Brain Imaging

Background:

• Resilience, the ability to resist mental disorders under stress, lacks understanding of its neural basis.
• Adolescence is a critical period for brain development and mental disorder onset.
• Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has not yet assessed white-matter microstructure variations with resilience in adolescents.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between white-matter microstructure, specifically fractional anisotropy (FA) in the corpus callosum (CC), and resilience in adolescents.
• To test the hypothesis that higher FA in the CC is characteristic of stress-resilient adolescents.

Main Methods:

• Compared three groups of adolescents: resilient (n=55), at-risk (n=68), and controls (n=123).
• Assessed personality using the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI).
• Utilized voxelwise statistics of DTI values in the CC with tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography for regional projections.

Main Results:

• Resilient adolescents exhibited higher FA values in the anterior CC compared to non-resilient and control groups.
• FA values in the CC correlated with resilience capacity.
• Anterior CC projections were identified in the anterior cingulate and frontal cortex. Personality traits, including neuroticism, differentiated non-resilient individuals.

Conclusions:

• Higher FA in an anterior CC region, projecting to frontal areas involved in cognitive functions, was observed in resilient adolescents.
• Personality characteristics were associated with psychiatric risk.
• Adolescent resilience may be associated with distinct white-matter microstructure patterns.