The association between latent trauma and brain structure in children

Abstract

The developing brain is marked by high plasticity, which can lead to vulnerability to early life stressors. Previous studies indicate that childhood maltreatment is associated with structural aberrations across a number of brain regions. However, prior work is limited by small sample sizes, heterogeneous age groups, the examination of one structure in isolation, the confounding of different types of early life stressors, and not accounting for socioeconomic status. These limitations may contribute to high variability across studies. The present study aimed to investigate how trauma is specifically associated with cortical thickness and gray matter volume (GMV) differences by leveraging a large sample of children (N = 9270) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD Study®). A latent measure of trauma exposure was derived from DSM-5 traumatic events, and we related this measure of trauma to the brain using structural equation modeling. Trauma exposure was associated with thinner cortices in the bilateral superior frontal gyri and right caudal middle frontal gyrus (pfdr-values < .001) as well as thicker cortices in the left isthmus cingulate and posterior cingulate (pfdr-values ≤ .027), after controlling age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Furthermore, trauma exposure was associated with smaller GMV in the right amygdala and right putamen (pfdr-values ≤ .048). Sensitivity analyses that controlled for income and parental education were largely consistent with the main findings for cortical thickness. These results suggest that trauma may be an important risk factor for structural aberrations, specifically for cortical thickness differences in frontal and cingulate regions in children.

Intrinsic brain abnormalities in female major depressive disorder patients with childhood trauma: A resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study

“…However, our study revealed that the FC between the left MFG and bilateral putamen had no observable discrepancy in the MDD with the childhood trauma group compared with the MDD without the childhood trauma group. Jeong et al (2021) found that trauma exposure may be related to structural alterations in the MFG and putamen. Thus, trauma exposure may also be an important factor underlying structural abnormalities of the MFG and putamen, but we need further research to find out if there are also functional abnormalities in this brain region.…”

Genetic and environment effects on structural neuroimaging endophenotype for bipolar disorder: a novel molecular approach

“…Importantly, putamen volume and function changes have been shown in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Recent studies have shown a negative correlation between childhood trauma and putamen volume [ 56 , 57 ]. In addition, fMRI studies have reported increased putamen activation to unconditioned stimulus and decreased putamen-amygdala connectivity in PTSD subjects [ 58 – 60 ].…”

Elucidating the Neurobiologic Etiology of Comorbid PTSD and Substance Use Disorders

“…The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study presents a unique resource to characterize the longitudinal impact of comorbid trauma and substance use in the developing brain [ 69 ]. The largest longitudinal study of neurodevelopment, ABCD characterizes trauma [ 70 ] and substance use [ 71 ]. While the study is designed to complete baseline assessments prior to the onset of regular substance use [ 69 ], one limitation may be the degree to which the occurrence of early childhood trauma prior to enrollment is fully captured.…”