RESUMEN
PURPOSE: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and potentially traumatic events (PTEs) contribute to increased substance use, mental health issues, and cognitive impairments. However, there's not enough research on how TBI and PTEs combined impact mental heath, substance use, and neurocognition. METHODS: This study leverages a subset of The National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) multi-site dataset with 551 adolescents to assess the combined and distinctive impacts of TBI, PTEs, and TBI+PTEs (prior to age 18) on substance use, mental health, and neurocognitive outcomes at age 18. RESULTS: TBI, PTEs, and TBI+PTEs predicted greater lifetime substance use and past-year alcohol and cannabis use. PTEs predicted greater internalizing symptoms, while TBI+PTEs predicted greater externalizing symptoms. Varying effects on neurocognitive outcomes included PTEs influencing attention accuracy and TBI+PTEs predicting faster speed in emotion tasks. PTEs predicted greater accuracy in abstraction-related tasks. Associations with working memory were not detected. CONCLUSION: This exploratory study contributes to the growing literature on the complex interplay between TBI, PTEs, and adolescent mental health, substance use, and neurocognition. The developmental implications of trauma via TBIs and/or PTEs during adolescence are considerable and worthy of further investigation.
RESUMEN
The National Institute of Mental Health strategic plan for advancing psychiatric neuroscience calls for an acceleration of discovery and the delineation of developmental trajectories for risk and resilience across the lifespan. To attain these objectives, sufficiently powered datasets with broad and deep phenotypic characterization, state-of-the-art neuroimaging, and genetic samples must be generated and made openly available to the scientific community. The enhanced Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample (NKI-RS) is a response to this need. NKI-RS is an ongoing, institutionally centered endeavor aimed at creating a large-scale (N > 1000), deeply phenotyped, community-ascertained, lifespan sample (ages 6-85 years old) with advanced neuroimaging and genetics. These data will be publically shared, openly, and prospectively (i.e., on a weekly basis). Herein, we describe the conceptual basis of the NKI-RS, including study design, sampling considerations, and steps to synchronize phenotypic and neuroimaging assessment. Additionally, we describe our process for sharing the data with the scientific community while protecting participant confidentiality, maintaining an adequate database, and certifying data integrity. The pilot phase of the NKI-RS, including challenges in recruiting, characterizing, imaging, and sharing data, is discussed while also explaining how this experience informed the final design of the enhanced NKI-RS. It is our hope that familiarity with the conceptual underpinnings of the enhanced NKI-RS will facilitate harmonization with future data collection efforts aimed at advancing psychiatric neuroscience and nosology.