Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Pubertal and Brain Development, and Internalizing Problems in Adolescence: A Longitudinal...

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with alterations in brain development and youth psychopathology risk. However, the mechanisms linking SES to neurodevelopment remain unclear. We tested whether pubertal timing and tempo mediate the association between SES and cortical thinning in adolescence and whether these neurobiological processes predict socioeconomic disparities in internalizing symptoms.

Participants (N = 2949) (1474 females) were drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (ages 10-14 years). Latent growth models tested whether pubertal development mediated the relationship between SES (operationalized as household income-to-needs ratio) and cortical thickness development. A second model tested associations with internalizing symptoms at age 14. These pathways were investigated for males and females separately in both global and region-specific models.

In females, low SES was associated with earlier pubertal timing and slower tempo (standardized β = -0.23 and β = 0.30, p < .001), which predicted faster and slower cortical thinning, respectively. Overall, low SES was associated with faster cortical thinning (β = 0.33, p < .012), partially mediated through earlier timing (β = 0.20, p < .001) and slower tempo (β = -0.18, p = .001) of pubertal development. These opposing pathways were observed for both global and regional cortical measures in areas associated with social cognition, emotion regulation, and self-referential processing. Earlier pubertal timing and faster cortical thinning partially mediated the link between SES and internalizing problems. In males, no significant indirect effects were observed globally, with few regional effects.

Findings suggest that pubertal development mediates the link between disadvantage and cortical development, in turn predicting adolescent psychopathology. These pathways may represent targets for early intervention in socioeconomically disadvantaged youth.