Neural correlates of childhood trauma with executive function in young healthy adults

Shaojia Lu,Dandan Wang,Manli Huang,Weijia Gao,Yi Xu,Zhaoguo Wei,Shaohua Hu,Lingjiang Li,Fen Pan

doi:10.18632/oncotarget.20051

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship among childhood trauma, executive impairments, and altered resting-state brain function in young healthy adults. Twenty four subjects with childhood trauma and 24 age- and gender-matched subjects without childhood trauma were recruited. Executive function was assessed by a series of validated test procedures. Localized brain activity was evaluated by fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (fALFF) method and compared between two groups. Areas with altered fALFF were further selected as seeds in subsequent functional connectivity analysis. Correlations of fALFF and connectivity values with severity of childhood trauma and executive dysfunction were analyzed as well. Subjects with childhood trauma exhibited impaired executive function as assessed by Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and Stroop Color Word Test. Traumatic individuals also showed increased fALFF in the right precuneus and decreased fALFF in the right superior temporal gyrus. Significant correlations of specific childhood trauma severity with executive dysfunction and fALFF value in the right precuneus were found in the whole sample. In addition, individuals with childhood trauma also exhibited diminished precuneus-based connectivity in default mode network with left ventromedial prefrontal cortex, left orbitofrontal cortex, and right cerebellum. Decreased default mode network connectivity was also associated with childhood trauma severity and executive dysfunction. The present findings suggest that childhood trauma is associated with executive deficits and aberrant default mode network functions even in healthy adults. Moreover, this study demonstrates that executive dysfunction is related to disrupted default mode network connectivity.

Highlights

Childhood trauma, including a spectrum of sexual, physical and emotional forms of abuse, as well as physical or emotional neglect, is highly prevalent and associated with risk for poor health outcomes in childhood and throughout the life course [1]
The two experimental groups differed on levels of Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and its sub-scales except sexual abuse
The present study investigated the executive performance and resting-state brain functional changes as measured by fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (fALFF) and seed-based functional connectivity (FC) analyses in young healthy adults with and without early trauma exposures

Summary

Introduction

Childhood trauma, including a spectrum of sexual, physical and emotional forms of abuse, as well as physical or emotional neglect, is highly prevalent and associated with risk for poor health outcomes in childhood and throughout the life course [1]. A prominent finding is reduction of FC in the default mode network (DMN) [9, 10], while other key findings include disruptions in emotional processing networks [11], executive network [12], salience network [13], and amygdala-DMN, as well as insula-hippocampus connectivity [14] In accordance with these findings, our prior study reported that childhood trauma, in the absence of psychiatric diagnosis, was associated with altered DMN, cerebellum-DMN, and insula-DMN connectivity, along with regional homogeneity (ReHo) changes in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), superior temporal gyrus (STG), insula, cerebellum, and middle temporal gyrus [15]. Philip et al (2013) used ReHo approach based on whole brain analysis and found a correlation of brain regional dysfunction in the IPL and STG with early life stress as well [16], suggesting that childhood trauma impacts FC and brain regional activity

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