Exposure to parental verbal abuse is associated with increased gray matter volume in superior temporal gyrus

Abstract

Objective-Exposure to parental verbal aggression (PVA) during childhood increases risk for the development of psychopathology, particularly mood and anxiety disorders. Other forms of childhood abuse have been found to be associated with alterations in brain structure. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether exposure to PVA was associated with discernible effects on brain morphology.Methods-Optimized voxel based morphometry was performed on 21 unmedicated, righthanded subjects (18-25 years) with histories of PVA and 19 psychiatrically healthy controls of comparable age and gender. Group differences in gray matter volume (GMV) -covaried by age, gender, parental education, financial stress, and total GMV -were assessed using high-resolution, T1-weighted, volumetric MRI data sets (Siemens 3T trio scanner).Results-GMV was increased by 14.1% in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG, BA 22) (P = 0.004, corrected cluster level). GMV in this cluster was associated most strongly with levels of maternal (β = 0.544, P < 0.0001) and paternal (β = 0.300, P < 0.02) verbal aggression and inversely associated with parental education (β = −0.577, P < 0.0001).Conclusion-Previous studies have demonstrated an increase in STG GMV in children with abuse histories, and found a reduction in fractional anisotropy in the arcuate fasciculus connecting Wernicke's and frontal areas in young adults exposed to PVA. These findings and the present results suggest that the development of auditory association cortex involved in language processing may be affected by exposure to early stress and/or emotionally-abusive language.

Childhood Maltreatment and Coping in Bipolar Disorder

“…maternal isolation/separation or isolation rearing) show that the mPFC is particularly affected by early life emotional stress [55][56][57][58][59][60]. In line, patients and healthy controls reporting CEM show a reduction in dorsal mPFC volume [61][62][63], and dorsal mPFC hypo-activity during higher order cognitive processing [unpublished data]. Therefore, our findings that individuals reporting CEM show enhanced dorsal mPFC responsivity during interpersonally stressful situations, suggest altered regulation/ fluctuations of dorsal mPFC activity in individuals reporting CEM.…”

Childhood Emotional Maltreatment Severity Is Associated with Dorsal Medial Prefrontal Cortex Responsivity to Social Exclusion in Young Adults

“…Interestingly, we observed a very different pattern of results in a sample of young adults exposed to high levels of parental verbal abuse but not WDV, CSA or PA. VBM revealed an increase in GMV in left superior temporal gyrus (auditory cortex) of verballyabused subjects [11], and DTI analyses showed reduced FA in the arcuate fasciculus interconnecting Wernicke's and Broca's areas [51]. Together these findings suggest that sensory systems that process and interpret the adverse sensory inputs may be modified by the exposure.…”

“…This approach has been useful in revealing similarities and differences between the neurobiological correlates of exposure to childhood sexual abuse [48,57], parental verbal abuse [11,51], WDV [8] and harsh corporal punishment [12,58]. This strength is also a limitation as many abused individuals, particularly those involved in the mental health system, experienced multiple forms of maltreatment.…”

“…VBM using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM8; Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, University College, London) was conducted as previously described [11,21,22]. Briefly, coarsely segmented images were registered to a standard template [23,24] that conforms to the space defined by the ICBM, NIH P-20 project.…”

Does sleep disruption mediate the effects of childhood maltreatment on brain structure?

“…In psychiatric studies we frequently rely on subject’s recollection, and it is hard to think of anything that we ask subjects to recollect with significantly higher test-retest reliability than maltreatment scores. Neurobiology also provides remarkable convergent support, as unbiased whole brain analyses delineate alteration specifically in visual cortex (Tomoda, Polcari, Anderson, & Teicher, 2012) and visual-limbic pathway (Choi, Jeong, Polcari, Rohan, & Teicher, 2012) in adults visually witnessing domestic violence, in auditory cortex (Tomoda et al, 2011) and auditory pathway (Choi, Jeong, Rohan, Polcari, & Teicher, 2009) in adults reporting parental verbal abuse, and thinning of the genital representation area of the somatosensory cortex in women reporting childhood sexual abuse (Heim, Mayberg, Mletzko, Nemeroff, & Pruessner, 2013). In short, retrospective reports are much more reliable and verifiable than critics are generally aware.…”