Delay discounting is a well-established risk factor for risky behaviors and the development of externalizing spectrum disorders. Building upon recent work that developed a novel cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) in adult samples, the objective of this study was to test whether the C-DD relates to delay discounting and subsequently externalizing pathology in adolescent samples. The current study used two samples: 9992 early adolescents participating in the ABCD study (Mage = 9.93 years old, 48.7% female), and 56 early adolescents recruited from the community (Mage = 12.27 years old, 55.4% female). Cortical thickness was estimated using the FreeSurfer standard pipeline, and the cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) was calculated based on procedures outlined by the initial validation study. All data are cross-sectional in nature. As expected, C-DD was positively related to delay discounting in the ABCD sample, even after accounting for age, biological sex, collection site and data quality indicators. Moreover, results showed that C-DD was discriminately associated with externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms in both samples of young adolescents. Findings replicate those found in adult samples, suggestive that C-DD may be a useful neuroanatomical marker of youth delay discounting. Replication of findings in other samples will be needed to determine whether C-DD has translational relevance to understanding externalizing psychopathology in adolescent samples.
Copyright: © 2023 Bounoua et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.