Neurocognitive Adaptation and Mental Health Vulnerability Following Maltreatment: The Role of Social Functioning

Abstract

Childhood maltreatment is associated with a lifetime increase in risk of mental health disorder. We propose that such vulnerability may stem in large part from altered patterns of social functioning. Here, we highlight key findings from the psychological and epidemiological literature indicating that early maltreatment experience compromises social functioning and attenuates social support in ways that increase mental health vulnerability. We then review the extant neuroimaging studies of children and adolescents, focusing on three domains implicated in social functioning: threat processing, reward processing, and emotion regulation. We discuss how adaptations in these domains may increase latent vulnerability to mental health problems by impacting on social functioning via increased stress susceptibility as well as increased stress generation. Finally, we explore how computational psychiatry approaches, alongside systematically reported measures of social functioning, can complement studies of neural function in the creation of a mechanistic framework aimed at informing approaches to prevention and intervention.

Neurobiological Markers of Resilience to Early-Life Adversity During Adolescence

“…While preliminary evidence suggests that as children become adolescents, peers increasingly modulate biological stress processes (106,107) and resilience factors (105,(108)(109)(110), reported effects are mixed (and paradigms disproportionately employ social evaluative stressors over other stressors like shared threats). A systematic review found that peer relationships do not modulate adolescent resilience to ELA (100), although this may partially reflect social challenges experienced by ELA-exposed youth (111).…”

35.2 Trust and Childhood Maltreatment: Evidence of Bias in Appraisal of Unfamiliar Faces

“…Considerable efforts are now being made to delineate maltreatment-driven alterations within specific neurocognitive processes thought to facilitate the later emergence of mental health difficulties (McCrory, Gerin, & Viding, 2017;McLaughlin, Weissman, & Bitr an, 2019). In particular, we have postulated that such alterations may confer latent vulnerability to future psychiatric disorder via their impact on social functioning (McCrory, Ogle, Gerin, & Viding, 2019;McCrory & Viding, 2015).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on Understanding Neurobiological Implication of Maltreatment: From Preschool to Emerging Adulthood

“…This special issue is rounded out with an integrative review from McCrory, Ogle, Gerin, and Viding (2019) who promote the perspective that exposure to child maltreatment compromises social functioning and attenuates social support in ways that increase vulnerability for mental health problems later on. Expanding on their latent vulnerability theoretical framework, in this review, they focus on neurocognitive adaptation, specifically highlighting the impact of stress vulnerability (ability of an individual to negotiate stress) and stress generation (probability increased future stressful events) on social function and subsequent psychopathology.…”

“…Below, we provide an overview of some key concepts framing research on the biological impact of child maltreatment primarily utilizing a developmental psychopathology framework (Cicchetti & Toth, 2009). Within these concepts, we highlight the nine papers comprising this special issue, including eight empirical papers utilizing multiple methodologies and exploring diverse outcomes as well as one review paper (McCrory, Ogle, Gerin, & Viding, 2019) highlighting compromised social functioning as a key mechanism linking childhood maltreatment to subsequent psychopathology. We hope that this issue stimulates an expansion of interdisciplinary research on underlying biological systems given that mechanisms mediating enduring vulnerabilities in maltreated individuals remain relatively scarce.…”