Functional Connectivity Uniqueness and Stability? A Signature of Cognitive and Psychiatric Problems in Children

Abstract Brain functional connectivity (FC) derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been serving as a potential “fingerprint” for adults. However, intra-subject variation of FC can be substantial and carry biologically meaningful information, especially during adolescence, a time of intense brain changes. Here, for the first time, we performed a large-scale analysis on cross-scan FC stability and its association with a diverse range of health measures in children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) data. Functional network connectivity (FNC), a network analog of FC, was extracted via an automated independent component analysis framework on 9071 subjects (age: 9 ~ 11 years) and compared across 4 scans. We found that the FNC profile can identify a given child from a large group with high accuracy (> 80%), though intra-subject variations exist cross-scan. The robustness of this finding is verified by replicating the child identification using the second-year scans and between longitudinal scans with a two-year interval. Moreover, cross-scan FNC stability was predictive of sleep condition, cognitive performance, and psychiatric problems in children, with higher stability correlated with better cognitive performance, longer sleep duration, and less psychotic expression. Meanwhile, parental psychopathology and prenatal exposure were associated with the FNC stability in their children. Overall, our findings show that a child’s connectivity profile is not only intrinsic but also exhibits reliable variability cross-scan, regardless of brain growth and development. The intra-subject connectivity stability may serve as a valuable biomarker to draw inferences on early cognitive and psychiatric behaviors in children.