Women with early maltreatment experience show increased resting-state functional connectivity in the theory of mind (ToM) network

Abstract

Background: Experience of childhood maltreatment significantly increases the risk for the development of psychopathology and is associated with impairments in socio-cognitive skills including theory-of-mind (ToM). In turn, neural alterations in ToM processing might then influence future interpersonal interaction and social-emotional understanding. Objective: To assess resting-state activity in the theory-of-mind network in traumatized and non-traumatized persons. Methods: Thirty-five women with a history of childhood maltreatment and 31 unaffected women completed a resting-state scan and a ToM localizer task. The peak coordinates from the localizer were used as the seed regions for the resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analyses (temporo-parietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, middle temporal gyrus and precuneus). Results: Child abuse was associated with increased RSFC between various ToM regions including the precuneus and the brainstem suggesting altered hierarchical processing in ToM regions. Number of types of abuse was driving the effect for the temporo-parietal junction and the brainstem, while the severity of abuse was linked to increased RSFC between the middle temporal gyrus and the frontal cortex. Post-hoc analyses of brainstem regions indicated the involvement of the serotonergic system (dorsal raphe). Conclusions: The data indicate a lasting impact of childhood maltreatment on the neural networks involved in social information processing that are integral to understanding others' emotional states. Indeed, such altered neural networks may account for some of the interpersonal difficulties victims of childhood maltreatment experience.

Do pictures really say more than a thousand words? A network approach to early traumatic experience and empathic responding

“…abuse types in maltreated women (Boccadoro et al, 2019). This begs for further inquiry on how social skills change in maltreated people.…”

“…This finding poses important clinical implications as it might suggest a buffering effect of empathic responsiveness against depression, plausibly via improved interpersonal relationships (Sened et al, 2017 ) leading to increased social support (Fritz, de Graaff, Caisley, van Harmelen, & Wilkinson, 2018 ). Although the underlying mechanisms of this effect are yet unknown, a recent study documented that resting-state brain activity in theory of mind areas depended on severity and number of abuse types in maltreated women (Boccadoro et al, 2019 ). This begs for further inquiry on how social skills change in maltreated people.…”

“…A regularised conditional independence network was constructed using state-of-the-art standard methodology 1 Edges represent regularised partial correlations between two nodes and indicate an association between two items or variables after controlling for all other nodes in the network. To reduce the likelihood of spurious connections (see Costantini et al, 2015), a graphical least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (gLASSO; Friedman, Hastie, & Tibshirani, 2008) was applied with an Extended Bayesian Information Criterion (EBIC) tuning parameter of γ = .5 (Foygel & Drton, 2010).…”

Alterações neurológicas em indivíduos com transtorno de estresse pós-traumático secundário ao abuso sexual na infância: uma revisão de escopo

“…Um estudo examinou se a análise de faces emocionais em um grupo de indivíduos com TEPT e histórico de abuso sexual infantil ativou regiões cerebrais esperadas. Nesse contexto, a observação de todas as faces resultou em hiperativação em regiões do cérebro relacionadas ao processamento de faces emocionais, incluindo a amígdala bilateral, ínsula bilateral, tálamo bilateral e PFC bilateral (Boccadoro et al 2019). No que tange ao volume da amígdala, um estudo apontou que jovens maltratados sem PTSD demonstraram volumes maiores da amígdala esquerda e do hipocampo direito em comparação com jovens maltratados, incluindo abuso sexual, com TEPT e controles não maltratados (Azevedo & Guerra, 1995).…”

“…Diferentemente desse resultado, um estudo transversal realizado em 2016, cujo objetivo era examinar as diferenças estruturais no cérebro de jovens maltratados com e sem TEPT crônico, observou que não houve diferença nos volumes do ACC entre os jovens maltratados e o grupo controle (Azevedo & Guerra, 1995). Ainda em relação ao córtex cingulado anterior, observou-se, em um dos artigos, que houve a hiperativação dessa área no grupo de TEPT em comparação com os controles (Boccadoro et al 2019).…”