Abstract
Individuals who have prior history of childhood traumatic experiences are at a high risk for a variety of psychological and behavioral problems throughout their lifetime. This study aimed to investigate whether such individuals exhibit altered cortical functional networks during a behavioral inhibition task. One hundred fifty-three non-clinical individuals were recruited and instructed to perform a Go/NoGo task during an electroencephalograph. Source-level weighted functional networks based on the graph theory were analyzed for NoGo-P3 processing. Based on their total scores on the childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) participants were divided into three groups: low CTQ, middle CTQ, and high CTQ. Results at the global level indicated decreased strength, clustering coefficient, and efficiency for the low and gamma bands in the high CTQ group. In addition, the path length of the low beta band was observed to be longer in the high CTQ group than the low CTQ group. At the nodal level, the nodal clustering coefficient of high CTQ group was decreased in left primary somatosensory cortex and middle occipital gyrus for the low beta band, and in left superior temporal gyrus for the gamma band. The nodal clustering coefficient of the left primary somatosensory cortex showed a significant negative correlation with the total CTQ score for the low beta band. In addition, the nodal clustering coefficient of the left middle occipital gyrus for the low beta band and superior temporal gyrus for the gamma band showed significant negative correlations with the emotional neglect score. Our results demonstrate an altered cortical functional network in individuals who experienced childhood trauma. In particular, the left primary somatosensory cortex, middle occipital gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus were found to be vulnerable in individuals who experienced childhood trauma, especially emotional neglect.
Highlights
Childhood trauma appears to be a crucial etiological factor in the development of various psychological and behavioral disorders across the lifespan[1]
The strength, clustering coefficient, and efficiency of the low beta and gamma bands were significantly decreased in the high childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) group compared to the low CTQ group
This study evaluated whether individuals with higher CTQ scores show altered cortical functional networks during a behavioral inhibition task (i.e., NoGo-P3 processing of the Go/NoGo task)
Summary
Childhood trauma appears to be a crucial etiological factor in the development of various psychological and behavioral disorders across the lifespan[1]. Childhood trauma may play a role in the development of impulsivity that progress into substance abuse and suicidal behaviors[4,5]. N2 and P3 components of ERPs are analyzed in the Go/NoGo task These two components generally appear in sequence and are associated with the early and late phases of response inhibition, respectively[24]. Recent studies have suggested that NoGo-P3 may play an important role in the post-response stage, reflecting processes of evaluation or monitoring of inhibition, error detection, and preparation for future trials[28,29]. EEG has significant advantages such as advanced time resolution for investigating the functional network of early neural processing (i.e., the N2 or P3 component) during the Go/NoGo task and cost-effectiveness. The spatial resolution of EEG can be substantially improved by mapping the scalp potential distribution onto the underlying cortical source space using source-imaging methods
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