Attention problems and cortical maturation in a large longitudinal sample of youths: The importance of accounting for sex differences
Shannon D. O’Connor, Robert Loughnan, Jonathan Ahern, Chun Chieh Fan, Robert R. Althoff, Hugh Garavan, Alexandra Potter, Matthew D. Albaugh · 2026
Read Attention problems and cortical maturation in a large longitudinal sample of youths: The importance of accounting for sex differences by Shannon D. O’Connor, Robert Loughnan, Jonathan Ahern, Chun Chieh Fan, Robert R. Althoff, Hugh Garavan, Alexandra Potter, Matthew D. Albaugh (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13213984.txt.
Description
O'Connor and co-authors (2026) re-tested a proposed brain marker of attention problems in a very large youth cohort. Earlier small studies had linked attention difficulties to slower thinning of the cortex, the brain's outer layer, as children age. Using the national Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development data — over 26,000 scans from 11,025 young people — the team modeled parent-rated attention problems against cortical change.
In first analyses that pooled the sexes, attention problems did go with reduced thinning. But once the models allowed brain development to differ by sex, the link vanished. Split by sex, neither boys nor girls showed it. A genetic risk score for ADHD showed no link either. The authors conclude the earlier findings likely reflected uncounted sex differences in development, not attention-specific delay, which undercuts cortical thinning as a diagnostic marker for ADHD-related behavior.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Shannon D. O’Connor, Robert Loughnan, Jonathan Ahern, Chun Chieh Fan, Robert R. Althoff, Hugh Garavan, Alexandra Potter, Matthew D. Albaugh |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 13 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |