Functional and Structural Longitudinal Change Patterns in Adolescent Brain

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) are two widely used techniques to analyze longitudinal brain functional and structural change in adolescents. Although longitudinal changes in intrinsic functional and structural changes have been studied separately, most studies focus on univariate change rather than estimating multivariate patterns of functional network connectivity (FNC) and gray matter (GM) changes with increased age. To analyze whole-brain structural and functional changes with increased age, we suggest two complementary techniques (1: linking of functional change pattern (FCP) to voxel-wise ∆GM and 2: the connection between FCP and structural change pattern (SCP)). In this study, we apply our approaches to the functional and GM data from the large-scale Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) data. We find a significant correlation between FCP and voxel-wise ∆GM for two components. We also investigate the links between FCP and SCP and hypothesize that functional connectivity and GM continue to exhibit linked changes during adolescence.Clinical Relevance— This work captures the whole-brain functional and structural change patterns link by introducing two complementary techniques.