Neighborhood opportunity, white matter, and cognition in a large pediatric neuroimaging study

Neighborhood opportunities are key influences on child development, yet existing research has largely emphasized socioeconomic indicators as proxies for environmental context. However, it remains unclear which specific components of multidimensional neighborhood features are most strongly associated with tract-level white matter microstructure and cognition in children. Using data from 6141 children (ages 8-10 years) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study and well-validated harmonized diffusion MRI, we examined multilevel associations between neighborhood opportunity, white matter microstructure, and cognitive performance. Neighborhood opportunity was measured using the Child Opportunity Index 2.0 (COI), which includes an overall score, three domain-level scores capturing Education, Social-Economic, and Health-Environment conditions, and 29 individual neighborhood indicators. Generalized additive models were used to characterize potentially non-linear associations while accounting for demographic and familial factors. Higher neighborhood opportunity was associated with greater fractional anisotropy (FA) in the Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus I (SLF-I), a fronto-parietal association tract implicated in higher-order cognitive functions. Higher neighborhood opportunity was also associated with better cognitive performance, with the strongest associations observed for Crystallized Cognition, reflecting accumulated knowledge and experience-based abilities. Mediation analyses indicated that SLF-I FA partially accounted for the association between neighborhood opportunity and cognitive performance. At the indicator level, access to high-quality education, higher neighborhood employment rates, and greater health insurance coverage emerged as the strongest correlates of neurocognitive outcomes. Together, these findings emphasize the value of multidimensional neighborhood measures and highlight specific, modifiable contextual factors that may represent targets for community-level interventions aimed at supporting neurocognitive development during childhood.