Social problems and brain structure development following childhood mild traumatic brain injury

Childhood mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is associated with elevated risk of developing social problems, which may be underpinned by changes in the structural developmental trajectory of the social brain, a network of cortical regions supporting social cognition and behavior. However, limited sample sizes and cross-sectional designs generally used in neuroimaging studies of pediatric TBI have prevented explorations of this hypothesis. This longitudinal retrospective study examined the development of parent-reported social problems and cortical thickness in social brain regions following childhood mTBI using data from the large population-based Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. Two-group latent change score models revealed different developmental trajectories from ages 10-12 years in the level of social problems between children with (n = 345) and without (n = 7,089) mTBI. Children with mTBI showed higher, but non-clinical, levels of social problems than controls at age 10. Then, social problems decreased over 2 years, but still remained higher, but non-clinical, than in controls in which they stayed stable. Both groups showed similar decreases in social brain cortical thickness between ages 10 and 12 years. Further studies providing detailed information on the injury mechanism and acute symptoms are needed to better understand individual differences in social functioning and brain development in pediatric TBI.