Abstract
Significant changes occur in brain structure and cognition during adolescence. Investigating their association can provide insight into brain-based cognitive development, yet previous studies are limited by narrow measures, small samples, and lacking focus on age-dependence. Using a large cohort (n = 8534, age 9–15) with structural MRI and diffusion imaging, we derive 16 regional metrics and integrate them via morphometric similarity networks to characterize 16,563 brain features. We apply large-scale models to investigate their associations with seven cognitive subtests and general intelligence (g), as well as age-dependence. Brain areas most strongly associated with cognition also show the greatest age-dependence of the associations, primarily in the frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Stronger and more age-dependent associations with cognition are observed for structural MRI measures and global hub measures, compared with diffusion-derived metrics and local measures, respectively. Overall, our study provides a comprehensive and reliable characterization of adolescent brain structure-cognition associations.
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Data availability
The data used in this study were obtained from the ABCD Study, release 5.1, under the terms of a data use agreement. Raw data cannot be shared directly by the authors but are accessible through application to the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). Researchers with approved access can use the provided scripts to reproduce the analyses. Source data underlying all graphs can be found in Supplementary Data 1.
Code availability
The processing scripts for this work were implemented in Python (3.6) and Matlab (R2017a). All analysis code is accessible online: https://github.com/JDYan/Brain-Cognition-Association.
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Acknowledgements
S.K. is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Alan C. Evans is supported by CFREF/HBHL. Kirsten Hilger is supported by the German Research Foundation (HI 2185/1-3). Jiadong Yan is supported by the China Scholarship Council. Data used in this study were obtained from the ABCD Study (https://abcdstudy.org), held in the NDA. The ABCD Study is a multisite, longitudinal study designed to recruit over 10000 children aged 9–10 and follow them for 10 years. It is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal partners under award numbers U01DA041048, U01DA050989, U01DA051016, U01DA041022, U01DA051018, U01DA051037, U01DA050987, U01DA041174, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U01DA041134, U01DA050988, U01DA051039, U01DA041156, U01DA041025, U01DA041120, U01DA051038, U01DA041148, U01DA041093, U01DA041089, U24DA041123, and U24DA041147. A complete list of participating sites and investigators is available at https://abcdstudy.org/consortium_members/. The data used in this study were from ABCD Release 5.1. We would like to acknowledge and thank Judy Chen for her feedback and support throughout the research process.
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J.Y.: Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing–original draft, Writing–review & editing, Visualization. Y.I.-M.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation. G.B.: Methodology, Software, Visualization, Validation. P.J.T.: Methodology, Investigation, Writing–original draft. K.X.: Methodology, Visualization. L.H.: Methodology, Visualization. J.C.: Investigation, Validation, Writing–original draft, Writing–review & editing. K.H.: Methodology, Validation, Writing–original draft. E.G.: Methodology, Validation, Writing–original draft. A.C.E.: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision. S.K.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing–original draft, Writing–review & editing, Funding acquisition, Supervision.
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Yan, J., Iturria-Medina, Y., Bezgin, G. et al. Comprehensive large-scale analyses reveal association between brain structure and cognitive ability during adolescence. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09831-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09831-4
