Population‐neuroscience study of the Tokyo TEEN Cohort (pn‐TTC): Cohort longitudinal study to explore the neurobiological substrates of adolescent psychological and behavioral development

Abstract

Aim Adolescence is a crucial stage of psychological development and is critically vulnerable to the onset of psychopathology. Our understanding of how the maturation of endocrine, epigenetics, and brain circuit may underlie psychological development in adolescence, however, has not been integrated. Here, we introduce our research project, the population‐neuroscience study of the Tokyo TEEN Cohort (pn‐TTC), a longitudinal study to explore the neurobiological substrates of development during adolescence. Methods Participants in the first wave of the pn‐TTC (pn‐TTC‐1) study were recruited from those of the TTC study, a large‐scale epidemiological survey in which 3171 parent–adolescent pairs were recruited from the general population. Participants underwent psychological, cognitive, sociological, and physical assessment. Moreover, adolescents and their parents underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; structural MRI, resting‐state functional MRI, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy), and adolescents provided saliva samples for hormone analysis and for DNA analysis including epigenetics. Furthermore, the second wave (pn‐TTC‐2) followed similar methods as in the first wave. Results A total of 301 parent–adolescent pairs participated in the pn‐TTC‐1 study. Moreover, 281 adolescents participated in the pn‐TTC‐2 study, 238 of whom were recruited from the pn‐TTC‐1 sample. The instruction for data request is available at: http://value.umin.jp/data-resource.html. Conclusion The pn‐TTC project is a large‐scale and population‐neuroscience‐based survey with a plan of longitudinal biennial follow up. Through this approach we seek to elucidate adolescent developmental mechanisms according to biopsychosocial models. This current biomarker research project, using minimally biased samples recruited from the general population, has the potential to expand the new research field of population neuroscience.

Cohort Profile: The Tokyo Teen Cohort study (TTC)

“…Along with TTC, the subsample study pn-TTC has also been conducted. The details of the pn-TTC are described elsewhere 13 …”

Brain/MINDS Beyond Human Brain MRI Project: A Protocol for Multi-Site Harmonization across Brain Disorders Throughout the Lifespan

“…Of these, 5 sites mainly explore psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, ASD, MDD, and BPD), 4 sites neurological disorders (AD, PD, multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy, chronic pain disorder, and epilepsy), and 2 sites both categories. Two sites measure the general adolescent population to investigate brain development and recruit through advertisement and cohort studies (Ando et al, 2019;Okada et al, 2019).…”

Bi-Directional Relationships Between Psychological Symptoms and Environmental Factors in Early Adolescence

“…The sample of TTC was recruited from three municipalities (Setagaya-ku, Mitaka-shi, and Chofu-shi) in the metropolitan area of Tokyo (25,26). The data were obtained between 2012 and 2015 for wave 1 (N = 3,171, girls = 1,487, age: mean [SD] = 122.1 [3.3] months; Table 1) and between 2014 and Mach 2017 for wave 2 (N = 3,007, girls = 1,418, age: 146.0 [3.7] months; follow-up rate 94.8%).…”

“…In this study, we intended to investigate the relationships between multiple environmental factors and psychological symptoms simultaneously in Tokyo teen cohort (TTC), a population-based prospective cohort in Tokyo, Japan (25,26). In this cohort, we measured a variety of psychological symptoms such as depressive symptoms and psychotic experiences from children at their age of 10 and 12 and internalized and externalized behavioral problems such as anxiety, somatoform, and aggressive behaviors from their main caregivers.…”