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Browsing by Author "Merz, Emily, advisor"

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    Educational attainment polygenic scores, socioeconomic factors, and resting-state functional connectivity in children and adolescents
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Hansen, Melissa, author; Merz, Emily, advisor; Thomas, Michael, committee member; Seger, Carol, committee member; Riggs, Nathan, committee member
    Socioeconomic factors, such as family income and parental education, have been associated with resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in networks responsible for executive function in children and adolescents. Yet, children's socioeconomic context interacts with the genetics they inherit from their parents, and few studies of socioeconomic context and rsFC in children have considered genetics. Polygenic scores for educational attainment (PGS-EA) derived from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) reflect genetic predisposition to educational attainment. Yet, no studies have examined the associations between PGS-EA and rsFC. The goal of this study was to investigate how socioeconomic factors and PGS-EA jointly predict rsFC in neural networks associated with executive function, including the central executive (CEN), dorsal attention (DAN), salience (SN), and default mode networks (DMN) in children and adolescents. Participants are typically-developing 3- to 21-year-olds (N = 245, 51% female) from the previously-collected Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition, and Genetics (PING) study. PGS-EA were computed based on the EA3 GWAS of educational attainment. Resting- state fMRI data were acquired, and system-level rsFC was computed. Findings indicated that family income was inversely associated with rsFC in the SN, while PGS-EA was positively associated with rsFC in the CEN. There were family income-by-age interactions for rsFC in the CEN and DAN, such that age was positively associated with rsFC in the CEN and DAN for children from higher income families and inversely associated with rsFC in the CEN for children from lower income families. These findings help to elucidate the independent genetic and socioeconomic contributions to connectivity in intrinsic functional neural networks underlying executive function.
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    Socioeconomic inequality, amygdala and ventral striatal connectivity, and affective outcomes in children and adolescents
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Strack, Jordan, author; Merz, Emily, advisor; Thomas, Michael, committee member; Seger, Carol, committee member; Lucas-Thompson, Rachel, committee member
    Socioeconomic disadvantage has been significantly associated with an increased risk for internalizing problems in children and adolescents. The neural mechanisms underlying these associations, however, are not well understood. Differences in connectivity of the amygdala and ventral striatum with the prefrontal cortex (PFC) may play an important role in these mechanisms. The goals of this study were to examine (1) the associations among socioeconomic factors, amygdala and ventral striatal resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC), and emotional outcomes in children and adolescents, (2) sex differences in associations between socioeconomic factors and amygdala and ventral striatal rsFC, and (3) interactions between socioeconomic factors and familial/genetic risk for anxiety/depression in predicting amygdala and ventral striatal rsFC. Participants were typically-developing 3- to 20-year-olds (50% male, N = 590) from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition, and Genetics (PING) study (Jernigan et al., 2016). Resting-state fMRI, socioeconomic (family income, parental education), and self-reported positive and negative affect data were collected. Measures of familial and genetic risk for anxiety/depression were family history of anxiety/depression and genome-wide polygenic risk scores for major depressive disorder (PRS-MDD), respectively. Whole-brain, seed-based functional connectivity analyses were conducted with the ventral striatum and the amygdala as seeds. Findings indicated significant interactions between socioeconomic factors and PRS-MDD for amygdala rsFC with the frontopolar cortex. Positive and negative affect were associated with amygdala and ventral striatum rsFC with various brain regions. Associations between socioeconomic factors and amygdala and ventral striatal rsFC and sex differences were not significant. These findings can be applied to informing the design of more effective prevention and intervention strategies to facilitate healthy emotional development.