ArticleJAMA pediatrics2020
Associations Among Body Mass Index, Cortical Thickness, and Executive Function in Children.
Article in JAMA pediatrics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 103 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
103 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 166 citations in OpenAlex.
- Optimal dosage of exercise interventions for enhancing inhibitory control in overweight and obese children and adolescents: insights from a multilevel meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Pooled it
- Optimal exercise intensity for improving executive function in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: systematic review and network meta-analysis.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- The effect of exercise intervention on inhibitory function in obese and overweight children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC pediatrics · 2025Pooled it
- An adaptive AI-based virtual reality sports system for adolescents with excess body weight: a randomized controlled trial.Nature medicine · 2025Trial
- The mediating role of brain structural-functional connectivity coupling in linking paternal education to BMI and depressive scores in young adults.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Feasibility of ConcurrentNMR in biomedicine · 2026Article
- Linking temporal dynamics of children's natural behavior to brain development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Weight gain and brain development in the ABCD study cohort: A decade of insight and the road ahead.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- BrainEnrich: Revealing Biological Insights for Imaging-Derived Phenotypes Through Transcriptomic Enrichment.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Neurophysiological and executive function differences among underweight, overweight, and normal-weight children and adolescents.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Cardiometabolic Risk and Structural Brain Development in a Large Community-Based US Cohort.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Memory Performance in Adolescents Living With Obesity: Brain Activation During Encoding and Retrieval in a Case-Control Study.Obesity science & practice · 2026Article
- Longitudinal Central Adiposity Accumulation is Associated with Cortical Alteration and Impaired Cognitive Function in Adolescents.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Nonlinear associations between body mass index and brain microstructure across adolescence in the ABCD Study.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Predicting developmental norms from baseline cortical thickness in longitudinal studies.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Sex-related difference of subcortical gray matter volume associated with crystallized intelligence in young adults with obesity.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Bidirectional associations between smart device use and body mass index among children aged 3 to 5 years: a longitudinal study.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2026Article
- MULTI-MODAL AND MULTI-REGION DISTANCE MODEL FOR NEUROIMAGING: APPLICATION TO ABCD STUDY.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Intervention effects of high-intensity interval exercise and moderate-intensity continuous exercise on executive functions in obese adolescents with low socioeconomic status.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Body mass index, cortical thickness and executive function in late childhood.BMC pediatrics · 2025Article
43 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Importance: A total of 25.7 million children in the United States are classified as overweight or obese. Obesity is associated with deficits in executive function, which may contribute to poor dietary decision-making. Less is known about the associations between being overweight or obese and brain development. Objective: To examine whether body mass index (BMI) is associated with thickness of the cerebral cortex and whether cortical thickness mediates the association between BMI and executive function in children. Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cross-sectional study, cortical thickness maps were derived from T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance images of a large, diverse sample of 9 and 10-year-old children from 21 US sites. List sorting, flanker, matrix reasoning, and Wisconsin card sorting tasks were used to assess executive function. Main Outcomes and Measures: A 10-fold nested cross-validation general linear model was used to assess mean cortical thickness from BMI across cortical brain regions. Associations between BMI and executive function were explored with Pearson partial correlations. Mediation analysis examined whether mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and executive function. Results: Among 3190 individuals (mean [SD] age, 10.0 [0.61] years; 1627 [51.0%] male), those with higher BMI exhibited lower cortical thickness. Eighteen cortical regions were significantly inversely associated with BMI. The greatest correlations were observed in the prefrontal cortex. The BMI was inversely correlated with dimensional card sorting (r = -0.088, P < .001), list sorting (r = -0.061, P < .003), and matrix reasoning (r = -0.095, P < .001) but not the flanker task. Mean prefrontal cortex thickness mediated the association between BMI and list sorting (mean [SE] indirect effect, 0.014 [0.008]; 95% CI, 0.001-0.031) but not the matrix reasoning or card sorting task. Conclusions and Relevance: These results suggest that BMI is associated with prefrontal cortex development and diminished executive functions, such as working memory.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.