Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 68, Issue 9, 1 November 2010, Pages 832-838
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Reduced Medial Prefrontal Cortex Volume in Adults Reporting Childhood Emotional Maltreatment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.06.011Get rights and content

Background

Childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) has been associated with a profound and enduring negative impact on behavioral and emotional functioning. Animal models have shown that adverse rearing conditions, such as maternal separation, can induce a cascade of long-term structural alterations in the brain, particularly in the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex. However, in humans, the neurobiological correlates of CEM are unknown.

Methods

Using high-resolution T1-weighted 3T magnetic resonance imaging, anatomical scans and a whole-brain optimized voxel-based morphometry approach, we examined whether healthy control subjects and unmedicated patients with depression and/or anxiety disorders reporting CEM before age 16 (n = 84; age: mean = 38.7) displayed structural brain changes compared with control subjects and patients who reported no childhood abuse (n = 97; age: mean = 36.6).

Results

We found that self-reported CEM is associated with a significant reduction in predominantly left dorsal medial prefrontal cortex volume, even in the absence of physical or sexual abuse during childhood. In addition, reduced medial prefrontal cortex in individuals reporting CEM is present in males and females, independent of concomitant psychopathology.

Conclusions

In this study, we show that CEM is associated with profound reductions of medial prefrontal cortex volume, suggesting that sustained inhibition of growth or structural damage can occur after exposure to CEM. Given the important role of the medial prefrontal cortex in the regulation of emotional behavior, our finding might provide an important link in understanding the increased emotional sensitivity in individuals reporting CEM.

Section snippets

The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety MRI Study

Participants were drawn from the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA), (n = 2981), a large cohort study (27). A subset of the NESDA participants (both patients and HCs) was selected to undergo MRI scanning for the NESDA MRI study. Inclusion criteria for patients in the NESDA-MRI study were current major depressive disorder (MDD) and/or anxiety disorder (ANX; panic disorder [PD] and/or social anxiety disorder [SAD] and/or generalized anxiety disorder [GAD] in the past 6 months

The Neuroanatomical Correlates of CEM

To investigate the neuroanatomical correlates of CEM, we first set up a VBM analysis to compare the GM density maps/images of individuals reporting CEM (n = 84) with GM density maps of the No Abuse group (n = 97). These analyses revealed that CEM was associated with a 5.14% reduction in the left dorsal mPFC (x = −11, y = 23, z = 40), Brodmann area 8, cluster size/number of voxels (K) = 263, Z = 3.80, p < .05 (SVC; Table 2). No significant differences were observed in hippocampus or amygdala or

Discussion

In this study, self-reported CEM was found to be associated with a significant reduction in predominantly left dorsal mPFC GM volume, independent of gender, and psychiatric status, at least in individuals who reported CEM occurring regularly or more frequently. Furthermore, the mPFC GM volume reduction was not due to concomitant childhood physical and/or sexual abuse, because the reductions were also found when CEM was experienced in absence of concurrent childhood physical and/or sexual abuse.

References (54)

  • J. Choi et al.

    Preliminary evidence for white matter tract abnormalities in young adults exposed to parental verbal abuse

    Biol Psychiatry

    (2009)
  • R. Cardinal et al.

    Emotion and motivation: The role of the amygdala, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex

    Neurosci Biobehav Rev

    (2002)
  • A. Dranovsky et al.

    Hippocampal neurogenesis: Regulation by stress and antidepressants

    Biol Psychiatry

    (2006)
  • J. Ashburner

    A fast diffeomorphic image registration algorithm

    Neuroimage

    (2007)
  • J.B. Levine et al.

    Isolation rearing impairs wound healing and is associated with increased locomotion and decreased immediate early gene expression in the medial prefrontal cortex of juvenile rats

    J Neurosci

    (2008)
  • M.I. Schubert et al.

    Effects of social isolation rearing on the limbic brain: A combined behavioral and magnetic resonance imaging volumetry study in rats

    Neuroscience

    (2009)
  • X.-H. Zhao et al.

    Altered default mode network activity in patient with anxiety disorders: An fMRI study

    Eur J Radiol

    (2007)
  • L. Bergouignan et al.

    Can voxel based morphometry, manual segmentation and automated segmentation equally detect hippocampal volume differences in acute depression?

    Neuroimage

    (2009)
  • M.A. Yassa et al.

    A quantitative evaluation of cross-participant registration techniques for MRI studies of the medial temporal lobe

    Neuroimage

    (2009)
  • D.G. McLaren et al.

    Rhesus macaque brain morphometry: A methodological comparison of voxel-wise approaches

    Methods

    (2010)
  • M.H. Teicher et al.

    Sticks, stones, and hurtful words: Relative effects of various forms of childhood maltreatment

    Am J Psychiatry

    (2006)
  • A.T. Beck

    The evolution of the cognitive model of depression and its neurobiological correlates

    Am J Psychiatry

    (2008)
  • B.E. Gibb et al.

    Childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and diagnoses of depressive and anxiety disorders in adult psychiatric outpatients

    Depress Anxiety

    (2007)
  • P. Spinhoven et al.

    The specificity of life adversities to affective disorders [published online ahead of print March 19]

    J Affect Disord

    (2010)
  • M.M. Sanchez et al.

    Early adverse experience as a developmental risk factor for later psychopathology: Evidence from rodent and primate models

    Dev Psychopathol

    (2001)
  • A.F.T. Arnsten

    Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function

    Nat Rev Neurosci

    (2009)
  • S.J. Lupien et al.

    Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition

    Nat Rev Neurosci

    (2009)
  • Cited by (0)

    Authors A-LvH and M-JvT contributed equally to this work.

    View full text