The Role of School Environment in Brain Structure, Connectivity, and Mental Health in Children: A Multimodal Investigation

Abstract

Background: Much work has been dedicated to understanding the effects of adverse home environments on brain development. While the school social and learning environment plays a role in child development, little work has been done to investigate the impact of the school environment on the developing brain. The goal of the present study was to examine associations between the school environment, brain structure and connectivity, and mental health.

Methods: In this preregistered study we investigated these questions in a large sample of adolescents (9-10 years of age) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. We examined the association between school environment and gray matter (n = 10,435) and white matter (n = 10,770) structure and functional connectivity (n = 9528). We then investigated multivariate relationships between school-associated brain measures and mental health.

Results: School environment was associated with connectivity of the auditory and retrosplenial temporal network as well as of higher-order cognitive networks like the cingulo-opercular, default mode, ventral attention, and frontoparietal networks. Multivariate analyses revealed that connectivity of the cingulo-opercular and default mode networks was also associated with mental health.

Conclusions: Findings shed light on the neural mechanisms through which favorable school environments may contribute to positive mental health outcomes in children. Our findings have implications for interventions targeted at promoting positive youth functioning through improving school environments.

Keywords: Adolescence; Brain gray and white matter; Magnetic resonance imaging; Neuroimaging; Resting-state functional connectivity; School environment.