Disrupted structural connectivity-gray matter covariance coupling and associated cytoarchitectural and transcriptomic...

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been associated with disrupted axonal connectivity (termed structural connectivity, SC) and altered interregional coupling of gray matter morphometry (termed gray matter covariance, GMC). However, the relationship between SC and GMC in ADHD remains understudied.

We investigated this relationship by quantifying the coupling between SC and GMC using neuroimaging data from 109 children with ADHD (aged 10.8 ± 2.3) and 105 typically developing controls (aged 11.2 ± 2.4) comparable for age and sex. Publicly accessible cytoarchitectural and transcriptomic datasets were employed to characterize the cellular and molecular correlates of ADHD-related SC-GMC coupling differences, and a machine learning pipeline was used to investigate its potential in classifying children with ADHD.

Children with ADHD showed aberrant SC-GMC coupling patterns in the right putamen, left hippocampus, and ventral attention network compared to controls. Their abnormal SC-GMC coupling patterns were correlated with sensory-fugal gradient of cytohistological variation and spatially associated with gene expression enriched for neurodevelopment-related biological pathways, including neuron projection development. The classification model based on SC-GMC couplings achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) value of 0.67.

Our findings provide novel insights into atypical couplings between brain gray and white matter structural connectomes in ADHD, their histological and transcriptional correlates, and prospects of using these data to expand clinical phenotyping.