Age Trajectories of the Structural Connectome in Child and Adolescent Offspring of Individuals With Bipolar Disorder or Schizophrenia

Offspring of parents with severe mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder or schizophrenia) are at elevated risk of developing psychiatric illness, owing to both genetic predisposition and increased burden of environmental stress. Emerging evidence indicates a disruption of brain network connectivity in young offspring of patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but the age trajectories of these brain networks in this high-familial-risk population remain to be elucidated. 271 T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted scans were obtained from 174 offspring of at least one parent diagnosed with bipolar disorder (n=74) or schizophrenia (n=51) and offspring of parents without severe mental illness (n=49). The age range was 8 to 23 years old; 97 offspring underwent two scans. Anatomical brain networks were reconstructed into structural connectivity matrices. Network analysis was performed to investigate anatomical brain connectivity. Offspring of parents with schizophrenia had differential trajectories of connectivity strength and clustering compared to offspring of parents with bipolar disorder and parents without severe mental illness, of global efficiency compared to offspring of parents without severe mental illness, and of local connectivity compared to offspring of parents with bipolar disorder. The findings of this study suggest that particularly familial high risk of schizophrenia is related to deviations in age trajectories of global structural connectome properties and local connectivity strength.