White matter tract myelin maturation and its association with general psychopathology in adolescence and early adulthood.

ABSTRACT: Adolescence is a time period associated with marked brain maturation that coincides with an enhanced risk for onset of psychiatric disorder. White matter tract myelination, a process that continues to unfold throughout adolescence, is reported to be abnormal in several psychiatric disorders. Here, we ask whether psychiatric vulnerability is linked to aberrant developmental myelination trajectories. We assessed a marker of myelin maturation, using magnetisation transfer (MT) imaging, in 10 major white matter tracts. We then investigated its relationship to the expression of a general psychopathology "p-factor" in a longitudinal analysis of 293 healthy participants between the ages of 14 and 24. We observed significant longitudinal MT increase across the full age spectrum in anterior thalami

SUBMITTER: Vanes LD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7268015 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature