Archival ReportReduced Medial Prefrontal Cortex Volume in Adults Reporting Childhood Emotional Maltreatment
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.
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Authors A-LvH and M-JvT contributed equally to this work.