Intersecting effects of social circumstances and transcendent thinking on mid-adolescents’ longitudinal functional connectome development

Socially moderated variation in mid-adolescents’ functional brain network (FBN) development is insufficiently studied, especially within low-SES contexts. Alongside demographic factors, evidence suggests adolescents’ malleable psychological dispositions may contribute, with possible clinical and educational implications. We applied graph theory to a unique 2-year longitudinal fMRI dataset (N=65) with an ecologically valid 2-hour interview revealing an emergent mid-adolescent psychological disposition, “transcendent thinking” (TT)—adolescents’ tendency to consider systems-level, ethical, personal implications of social information. Overall, FBNs showed increased segregation and entropy but decreased integration and energy. Modularity increased particularly in somatosensory subnetworks. Classifying participants by two key demographic factors, parents’ education (PE) and community violence exposure (CVE), FBN changes differed by group, and TT moderated changes in high-CVE/low-PE participants, arguably the most vulnerable group. Machine learning revealed TT and CVE, but not IQ, as principal FBN change predictors across groups. Findings suggest social context and psychological dispositions influence low-SES adolescents’ FBN development.