Functional connectome linking child-parent relationships with psychological problems in adolescence

Paternal- and maternal-child relationships are associated with partly distinct psychobehavioral problems, which often manifest differently between boys and girls. In order to understand neural mechanisms underlying complicated mappings between child-parent relationship and adolescents’ problems, we used a dataset of early adolescents ( N =93) and separately estimated the effects of paternal- and maternal-child relationships on resting-state functional connectivity and problems in boys and girls. General linear models identified the effects of paternal- and maternal-child relationships in different sets of functional connectivity, which we termed functional brain connectomes associated with paternal- and maternal-child relationship (FBCp and FBCm), respectively. Subsequent connectome-based models using these FBCs significantly predicted aggressive behaviors only for boys and internalizing problems selectively only girls. Lastly, a causal discovery method identified causal paths from daughter-mother relationship to FBCm, and then to daughter’s internalizing problems. These observations highlight sex-dependent mechanisms linking child-parent relationship, brain, and psychobehavioral problems in early adolescence.