ArticleMolecular psychiatry2024
"Puberty age gap": new method of assessing pubertal timing and its association with mental health problems.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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15 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pubertal timing predicts resting-state functional connectivity of cortical networks.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- In relation to anxiety severity, puberty moderates functional connectivity between the amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex for negative relative to neutral stimuli during an emotional categorization task.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Functional brain network correlates of pubertal timing and depressive symptoms in preadolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Individual differences reveal distinct age and pubertal contributions to the refinement of the functional cortical hierarchy during adolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- A Closer Look at Adolescent Mental Health: Prevalence of Internalizing and Externalizing Problems Across Educational and Gender Groups.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2026Article
- Predicting developmental norms from baseline cortical thickness in longitudinal studies.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Brain Age in Conduct Disorder:: A Mega-Analysis of the ENIGMA Antisocial Behavior Working Group.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Age at menarche and chronological age as explanatory factors of BMI: a cross-sectional study among Peruvian adolescents.BMC women's health · 2025Article
- Examining androgen and estrogen profiles during pubertal development in autistic and neurotypical girls.Hormones and behavior · 2025Article
- Social and individual factors associated with eating disorders risk among adolescents in secondary schools of Sicily (south-Italy).Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2025Article
- Adolescent mental health before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Iceland: a repeated, cross-sectional, population-based study.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2025Article
- The intersection and developmental trajectory of morning cortisol and testosterone in autistic and neurotypical youth.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- Adolescent Depression and Cognition Risk for Suicide: An Investigation of Risk Factors and Gene Environment Interactions.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Trajectory of depressive symptoms over adolescence in autistic and neurotypical youth.Molecular autism · 2024Article
- Developmental brain changes during puberty and associations with mental health problems.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Puberty is linked to mental health problems during adolescence, and in particular, the timing of puberty is thought to be an important risk factor. This study developed a new measure of pubertal timing that was built upon multiple pubertal features and their nonlinear changes over time (i.e., with age), and investigated its association with mental health problems. Using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) cohort (N ~ 9900, aged 9-13 years), we employed three different models to assess pubertal timing. These models aimed to predict chronological age based on: (i) observed physical development, (ii) hormone levels (testosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone [DHEA]), and (iii) a combination of both physical development and hormones. To achieve this, we utilized a supervised machine learning approach, which allowed us to train the models using the available data and make age predictions based on the input pubertal features. The accuracy of these three models was evaluated, and their associations with mental health problems were examined. The new pubertal timing model performed better at capturing age variance compared to the more commonly used linear regression method. Further, the model based on physical features accounted for the most variance in mental health, such that earlier pubertal timing was associated with higher symptoms. This study demonstrates the utility of our new model of pubertal timing and suggests that, relative to hormonal measures, physical measures of pubertal maturation have a stronger association with mental health problems in early adolescence.
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