Associations between Family Adversity and Brain Volume in Adolescence: Manual vs. Automated Brain Segmentation Yields Different Results.

Hannah Lyden,Larissa Del Piero,Jonas T Kaplan,Matthew E Sachs,Darby Saxbe,Gayla Margolin,Sarah I Gimbel,A Bryna Tsai

doi:10.3389/fnins.2016.00398

Hannah Lyden, Larissa Del Piero + Show 6 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.00398

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Abstract

Associations between brain structure and early adversity have been inconsistent in the literature. These inconsistencies may be partially due to methodological differences. Different methods of brain segmentation may produce different results, obscuring the relationship between early adversity and brain volume. Moreover, adolescence is a time of significant brain growth and certain brain areas have distinct rates of development, which may compromise the accuracy of automated segmentation approaches. In the current study, 23 adolescents participated in two waves of a longitudinal study. Family aggression was measured when the youths were 12 years old, and structural scans were acquired an average of 4 years later. Bilateral amygdalae and hippocampi were segmented using three different methods (manual tracing, FSL, and NeuroQuant). The segmentation estimates were compared, and linear regressions were run to assess the relationship between early family aggression exposure and all three volume segmentation estimates. Manual tracing results showed a positive relationship between family aggression and right amygdala volume, whereas FSL segmentation showed negative relationships between family aggression and both the left and right hippocampi. However, results indicate poor overlap between methods, and different associations were found between early family aggression exposure and brain volume depending on the segmentation method used.

Highlights

Adversity is known to compromise mental and physical health across the lifespan (Felitti et al, 1998)
The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between early life aggression exposure and brain volume in adolescence
Given the lack of research on the relationship between family aggression exposure in early life and brain volume in adolescence, as well as the possibility that the results found may depend on the choice of method, the current study aimed to address whether: (1) different methodologies used for segmentation would overlap in a sample of adolescents and (2) if these different methods would lead to similar or disparate results when exploring the association between family aggression exposure in early life and brain volume in adolescence

Summary

Introduction

Adversity is known to compromise mental and physical health across the lifespan (Felitti et al, 1998). Children exposed to “risky family” environments show deficits in emotion regulation, social competence, and dysregulated stress responding (Repetti et al, 2002). Altered brain structure and function due to early life stress is one possible mechanism. The hippocampus is a brain region critically important to memory (Markowitsch and Pritzel, 1985) and is known to be modulated by stress or adversity exposure, possibly through the influence. Aggression Exposure and Brain Volume of stress hormones. Smaller hippocampi have been found in adults who have experienced early adversity (Wolkowitz et al, 1990; Newcomer et al, 1994; Keenan et al, 1996; Bremner et al, 1997; Perry, 2001; Heim et al, 2002; Lupien et al, 2005; Teicher et al, 2006), but not in children (Carrion et al, 2001; De Bellis, 2001; De Bellis et al, 2002; Woon and Hedges, 2008), nor in adolescents (Carrion et al, 2001; De Bellis, 2001; De Bellis et al, 2002; Woon and Hedges, 2008; Frodl et al, 2010; Rao et al, 2010)

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