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Morphometric Correlates of Executive Functioning Dimensions in Children

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Nicole Greenwood¹ (), Connor Watkinson¹, Michelle Kibby¹; ¹Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Introduction: Executive functioning (EF) encompasses cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that support self-regulation (Crisofori et al., 2019), yet the neuroanatomical bases of these regulation dimensions in childhood remain uncharacterized. This study examined cortical morphometry correlates of these dimensions in a heterogeneous pediatric sample, including children with ADHD, comorbid ADHD + Reading Disorder, and typically developing, to determine whether the three dimensions show dissociable neural patterns. Methods and Results: Structural MRI scans from 106 children, aged 8–12 years, were processed using CAT12. Surface-based morphometric indices—cortical thickness, gyrification, sulcal depth, and fractal dimension—were analyzed in relation to the BRIEF T-scores reflecting cognitive, emotional, and behavioral regulation (Metacognitive, Emotional Control, and Inhibition). Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement (TFCE) with 10,000 permutations and a threshold of p < .01 was applied to identify regional effects. Higher (worse) BRIEF T-scores were associated with reduced fractal dimension in the right inferior parietal for emotion regulation, decreased gyrification in left inferior parietal for inhibition, and reduced sulcal depth in frontal regions for metacognition. Toro’s local gyrification analyses revealed both negative (frontal) and positive (parietal) relationships with emotion scores, as well as negative parietal associations with metacognition. No relationships emerged for cortical thickness. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the EF dimensions are reflected primarily in measures of cortical complexity rather than thickness during late childhood, implicating frontoparietal morphology in the regulation of emotion, behavior, and cognition. Results highlight the importance of examining distinct morphometric parameters to better characterize the cortical substrates of developing executive control systems.

Topic Area: NEUROANATOMY