Abstract
Childhood trauma, and in particular physical neglect, has been repeatedly associated with lower performance on measures of social cognition (e.g. emotion recognition tasks) in both psychiatric and non-clinical populations. The neural mechanisms underpinning this association have remained unclear. Here, we investigated whether volumetric changes in three stress-sensitive regions—the amygdala, hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)—mediate the association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition in a healthy participant sample (N = 112) and a clinical sample of patients with schizophrenia (N = 46). Direct effects of childhood trauma, specifically physical neglect, on Emotion Recognition Task were observed in the whole sample. In healthy participants, reduced total and left ACC volumes were observed to fully mediate the association between both physical neglect and total childhood trauma score, and emotion recognition. No mediating effects of the hippocampus and amygdala volumes were observed for either group. These results suggest that reduced ACC volume may represent part of the mechanism by which early life adversity results in poorer social cognitive function. Confirmation of the causal basis of this association would highlight the importance of resilience-building interventions to mitigate the detrimental effects of childhood trauma on brain structure and function.
Highlights
The ability to recognise emotional facial expressions is a highly developed and integral feature of social cognition, and an important predictor of socio-occupational functioning, contributing to quality of life (Fett et al, 2011; Fiszdon et al, 2013)
These results suggest that reduced anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) volume may represent part of the mechanism by which early life adversity results in poorer social cognitive function
Based on our recent systematic review and findings (Rokita et al, 2018, 2020), we tested the hypothesis that the association between higher levels of childhood trauma and poorer emotion recognition would be mediated via reduced volumes in one or more of three stress-sensitive brain regions—the hippocampus, amygdala and ACC
Summary
The ability to recognise emotional facial expressions is a highly developed and integral feature of social cognition, and an important predictor of socio-occupational functioning, contributing to quality of life (Fett et al, 2011; Fiszdon et al, 2013). Individual differences in emotion recognition have been found in healthy samples with lower age and higher education level leading to a better ability to recognise facial expressions (Isaacowitz et al, 2007; Tamamiya and Hiraki, 2013). We explored the possible cognitive mechanisms by which traumatic experiences in childhood may lead to social cognitive deficits in later life, in both clinical and non-clinical populations, suggesting the mediating role of attachment-related processes (Rokita et al, 2018, 2020). The neural substrates underlying this relationship have yet to be clarified as the specific association between childhood trauma, brain structure and social cognitive function has not yet been investigated
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