Evidence for Depressogenic Spontaneous Thoughts and Altered Resting-State Connectivity in Adolescents With a Maltreatment History

Brain connectivity disruptions in PTSD related to early adversity: a multimodal neuroimaging study

Background: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is increasingly prevalent in individuals with adverse childhood experiences (ACE). However, the underlying neurobiology of ACE-related PTSD remains unclear.Objective: The present study investigated the brain connectivity in ACE-related PTSD using multimodal neuroimaging data.Methods: Using a total of 119 participants with ACE (70 with ACE-related PTSD and 49 ACE-exposed controls), this study acquired T1-weighted MRI, diffusion-weighted MRI, and resting-state fMRI data to examine structural and functional connectivity between groups. Joint connectivity matrix independent component analysis (Jcm-ICA) was employed to allow shared information from all modalities to be examined and assess structural and functional connectivity differences between groups.Results: Jcm-ICA revealed distinct connectivity alterations in key brain regions involved in cognitive control, self-referential processing, and social behaviour. Compared to controls, the PTSD group exhibited functional hyperconnectivity of the right medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the default mode network and right inferior temporal cortex, and functional hypoconnectivity in the lateral-PFC of the central executive network and structural hypoconnectivity in white matter pathways including the right orbitofrontal region (OFC) linked to social behaviour. Post-hoc analyses using the joint brain-based information revealed that the severity of ACE, the number of traumas, and PTSD symptoms later in life significantly predicted the effects of ACE-related PTSD on the brain. Notably, no direct association between brain connectivity alterations and PTSD symptoms or the number of traumas within the PTSD group was observed.Conclusion: This study offers novel insights into the neurobiology of ACE-related PTSD using multimodal data fusion. We identified alterations in key brain networks (DMN, CEN) and OFC, suggesting potential deficits in cognitive control and social behaviour alongside heightened emotional processing in individuals with PTSD. Furthermore, our findings highlight the combined influence of ACE exposure, number of traumas experienced, and PTSD severity on brain connectivity disruptions, potentially informing future interventions.

In-Scanner Thoughts shape Resting-state Functional Connectivity: how participants "rest" matters

Resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) scans-namely those lacking experimentally-controlled stimuli or cognitive demands-are often used to identify aberrant patterns of functional connectivity (FC) in clinical populations. To minimize interpretational uncertainty, researchers control for across-cohort disparities in age, gender, co-morbidities, and head motion. Yet, studies rarely, if ever, consider the possibility that systematic differences in inner experience (i.e., what subjects think and feel during the scan) may directly affect FC measures. Here we demonstrate that is the case using a rs-fMRI dataset comprising 471 scans annotated with experiential data. Wide-spread significant differences in FC are observed between scans that systematically differ in terms of reported in-scanner experience. Additionally, we show that FC can successfully predict specific aspects of in-scanner experience in a manner similar to how it predicts demographics, cognitive abilities, clinical outcomes and labels. Together, these results highlight the key role of in-scanner experience in shaping rs-fMRI estimates of FC.

Effects of childhood maltreatment and major depressive disorder on functional connectivity in hippocampal subregions

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) with childhood maltreatment is a prevalent clinical phenotype. Prior studies have observed abnormal hippocampal activity in MDD patients, considering the hippocampus as a single nucleus. However, there is limited research investigating the static and dynamic changes in hippocampal subregion functional connectivity (FC) in MDD patients with childhood maltreatment. Therefore, we employed static and dynamic FC analyses using hippocampal subregions, including the anterior hippocampus and posterior hippocampus, as seed regions to investigate the neurobiological alterations associated with MDD resulting from childhood maltreatment. This study involved four groups: MDD with (n = 48) and without childhood maltreatment (n = 30), as well as healthy controls with (n = 57) and without (n = 46) childhood maltreatment. Compared to MDD patients without childhood maltreatment, those with childhood maltreatment exhibit altered FC between the hippocampal subregion and multiple brain regions, including the anterior cingulate gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, putamen, calcarine gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, angular gyrus, and supplementary motor area. Additionally, dynamic FC between the right medial-2 hippocampal head and the right calcarine gyrus shows a positive correlation with childhood maltreatment across all its subtypes. Moreover, dFC between the right hippocampal tail and the left angular gyrus moderates the relationship between childhood maltreatment and the depression severity. Our findings of distinct FC patterns within hippocampal subregions provide new clues for understanding the neurobiological basis of MDD with childhood maltreatment.

EEG Microstates in Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Meta-analysis

To reduce the psycho-social burden increasing attention has focused on brain abnormalities in the most prevalent and highly co-occurring neuropsychiatric disorders, such as mood and anxiety. However, high inter-study variability in these patients results in inconsistent and contradictory alterations in the fast temporal dynamics of large-scale networks as measured by EEG microstates. Thus, in this meta-analysis, we aim to investigate the consistency of these changes to better understand possible common neuro-dynamical mechanisms of these disorders.In the systematic search, twelve studies investigating EEG microstate changes in participants with mood and anxiety disorders and individuals with subclinical depression were included in this meta-analysis, adding up to 787 participants.The results suggest that EEG microstates consistently discriminate mood and anxiety impairments from the general population in patients and subclinical states. Specifically, we found a small significant effect size for B microstates in patients compared to healthy controls, with larger effect sizes for increased B presence in unmedicated patients with comorbidity. In a subgroup meta-analysis of ten mood disorder studies, microstate D showed a significant effect size for decreased presence. When investigating only the two anxiety disorder studies, we found a significantly small effect size for the increased microstate A and a medium effect size for decreased microstate E (one study). However, more studies are needed to elucidate whether these findings are diagnostic-specific markers.Results are discussed in relation to the functional meaning of microstates and possible contribution to an explanatory mechanism of overlapping symptomatology of mood and anxiety disorders.

Altered regional brain activity moderating the relationship between childhood trauma and depression severity

OBJECTIVE

Childhood trauma (CT) is a major environmental risk factor for an adverse course and treatment outcome of major depressive disorder (MDD). Evidence suggests that an altered regional brain activity may play a crucial role in the relationship between CT and MDD. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between CT, regional brain activity, and depression severity.

METHODS

In this study, 96 patients with MDD and 82 healthy controls (HCs) participated. Regional brain activity was measured using the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) and regional homogeneity (ReHo). These measures were compared between the MDD and HC groups, and the values of different brain regions were extracted as moderators.

RESULTS

Increased fALFF and ReHo values were observed in the left middle temporal gyrus in the MDD group compared with the HC group (p < 0.001). Furthermore, the fALFF and ReHo values moderated the positive correlation between the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) score, 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17) total score, and retardation factor score in the MDD group (all, p < 0.05). Finally, as the fALFF and ReHo values increased, the positive correlations between CTQ, HAMD-17 total, and retardation dimension scores became stronger.

CONCLUSION

Our study highlighted the crucial role of altered brain function in connecting childhood maltreatment with depressive symptoms. Our findings indicate that an altered regional brain activity could explain the potential neurobiological mechanisms of MDD symptoms, offering the opportunity to function as a powerful diagnostic biomarker.

Childhood adversity and mind wandering: the mediating role of cognitive flexibility and habitual tendencies

ABSTRACTBackground: Initial evidence proposes that exposure to childhood adversity may induce avoidance or withdrawal behaviour. However, it remains unclear whether childhood adversity results in avoidance from externally directed thinking to both deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering, i.e. intentionally or unintentionally diverting attention from ongoing task to task-independent thoughts.Objective: To assess the associations between childhood adversity, and mind wandering, and to evaluate the mediating roles of cognitive flexibility, and habit tendencies.Methods: A total of 601 Chinese subjects (378 females, Mage = 19.37) participated in the current study. The participants completed a series of questionnaires including demographics, childhood maltreatment, cognitive flexibility, habitual tendencies, and mind wandering.Results: Hierarchical regression analyses showed childhood adversity, the control facet of cognitive flexibility, and the automaticity facet of habitual tendencies had significant contributions to deliberate mind wandering (β = 0.10, β = -0.40, and β = 0.06) and spontaneous mind wandering (β = 0.09, β = -0.28, and β = 0.07). Serial mediation analyses revealed that the control and automaticity partially mediated associations between childhood adversity and mind wandering (deliberate mind wandering: 95% CIs = [0.037 0.078], and spontaneous mind wandering: 95% CIs = [0.023, 0.062]).Conclusions: The findings underscore the pivotal role of mediators in delineating the relationship between childhood adversity and mind wandering in everyday life. Interventions geared toward augmenting the control component of cognitive flexibility and regulating the automatic component of habitual tendencies show the potential to ameliorate the propensity of individuals affected by childhood adversity to disengage cognitively from the present moment.

Resting-state cerebral blood flow and functional connectivity abnormalities in depressed patients with childhood maltreatment: Potential biomarkers of vulnerability?

AIM

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is an important risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD). This study aimed to explore the specific effect of CM on cerebral blood flow (CBF) and brain functional connectivity (FC) in MDD patients.

METHODS

A total of 150 subjects were collected including 55 MDD patients with CM, 34 MDD patients without CM, 19 healthy controls (HC) with CM, and 42 HC without CM. All subjects completed MRI scans and neuropsychological tests. Two-way analysis of covariance was used to detect the main and interactive effects of disease and CM on CBF and FC across subjects. Then, partial correlation analyses were conducted to explore the behavioral significance of altered CBF and FC in MDD patients. Finally, a support vector classifier model was applied to differentiate MDD patients.

RESULTS

MDD patients represented increased CBF in bilateral temporal lobe and decreased CBF in right visual cortex. Importantly, significant depression-by-CM interactive effects on CBF were primarily located in the frontoparietal regions, including orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), and parietal cortex. Moreover, significant FC abnormalities were seen in OFC-PFC and frontoparietal-visual cortex. Notably, the abnormal CBF and FC were significantly associated with behavioral performance. Finally, a combination of altered CBF and FC behaved with a satisfactory classification ability to differentiate MDD patients.

CONCLUSIONS

These results highlight the importance of frontoparietal and visual cortices for MDD with CM experience, proposing a potential neuroimaging biomarker for MDD identification.

[Emotional Abuse in Childhood and Adolescence: Biological Embedding and Clinical Implications]

Emotional abuse, defined as degrading, manipulative, or neglectful behaviors by caregivers, represents a common adverse experience for children and adolescents, often co-occurring with other maltreatment types. Exposure to emotional abuse significantly affects mental health across the lifespan and is particularly associated with elevated depression risk.This review examinesmechanisms, by which emotional abuse influences brain development and the neuroendocrine stress response system and discusses the roles of genetic vulnerability and epigenetic processes in contributing to an elevated mental health risk. Emotional abuse has similar effects on brain networks responsible for emotion processing and regulation as other maltreatment types.Moreover, it uniquely affects networks related to self-relevant information and socio-cognitive processes. Furthermore, emotional abuse is associated with an impaired recovery of the neuroendocrine response to acute stress. Similar to other maltreatment types, emotional abuse is associated with epigenetic changes in genes regulating the neuroendocrine stress response system that are implicated in increased mental health risk.These findings suggest that emotional abuse has equally detrimental effects on children'smental health as physical or sexual abuse, warranting broader societal awareness and enhanced early detection efforts. Early interventions should prioritize emotion regulation, social cognition, self-esteemenhancement, and relationship- oriented approaches for victims of emotional abuse.

Children with maltreatment exposure exhibit rumination-like spontaneous thought patterns: association with symptoms of depression, subcallosal cingulate cortex thickness, and cortisol levels

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment is associated with pervasive risk for depression. However, the immediate cognitive and neural mechanisms that mediate this risk during development are unknown. We here studied the impact of maltreatment on self-generated thought (SGT) patterns and their association with depressive symptoms, subcallosal cingulate cortex (SCC) thickness, and cortisol levels in children.

METHODS

We recruited 183 children aged 6-12 years, 96 of which were exposed to maltreatment. Children performed a mind wandering task to elicit SGTs. A subgroup of children underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (N = 155) for SCC thickness analyses and saliva collection for quantification of free cortisol concentrations (N = 126) was collected. Using network analysis, we assessed thought networks and compared these networks between children with and without maltreatment exposure. Using multilevel analyses, we then tested the association between thought networks of children with maltreatment exposure with depressive symptoms, SCC thickness, and cortisol levels.

RESULTS

Children exposed to maltreatment generated fewer positively valenced thoughts. Network analysis revealed rumination-like thought patterns in children with maltreatment exposure, which were associated with depressive symptoms, SCC thickness, and cortisol levels. Children with maltreatment exposure further exhibited decreased future-self thought coupling, which was associated with depressive symptoms, while other-related and past-oriented thoughts had the greatest importance within the network.

CONCLUSIONS

Using a novel network analytic approach, we provide evidence that children exposed to maltreatment exhibit ruminative clustering of thoughts, which is associated with depressive symptoms and neurobiological correlates of depression. Our results provide a specific target for clinical translation to design early interventions for middle childhood. Targeting thought patterns in children with maltreatment exposure may be an effective strategy to effectively mitigate depression risk early in life.

A systematic review of childhood maltreatment and resting state functional connectivity

Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) has the potential to shed light on how childhood abuse and neglect relates to negative psychiatric outcomes. However, a comprehensive review of the impact of childhood maltreatment on the brain's resting state functional organization has not yet been undertaken. We systematically searched rsFC studies in children and youth exposed to maltreatment. Nineteen studies (total n = 3079) met our inclusion criteria. Two consistent findings were observed. Childhood maltreatment was linked to reduced connectivity between the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and with widespread heightened amygdala connectivity with key structures in the salience, default mode, and prefrontal regulatory networks. Other brain regions showing altered connectivity included the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus. These patterns of altered functional connectivity associated with maltreatment exposure were independent of symptoms, yet comparable to those seen in individuals with overt clinical disorder. Summative findings indicate that rsFC alterations associated with maltreatment experience are related to poor cognitive and social functioning and are prognostic of future symptoms. In conclusion, maltreatment is associated with altered rsFC in emotional reactivity, regulation, learning, and salience detection brain circuits. This indicates patterns of recalibration of putative mechanisms implicated in maladaptive developmental outcomes.

Functional brain plasticity following childhood maltreatment: A longitudinal fMRI investigation of autobiographical memory processing

Altered autobiographical memory (ABM) processing characterizes some individuals with experiences of childhood maltreatment. This fMRI study of ABM processing evaluated potential developmental plasticity in neural functioning following maltreatment. Adolescents with (N = 19; MT group) and without (N = 18; Non-MT group) documented childhood maltreatment recalled specific ABMs in response to emotionally valenced cue words during fMRI at baseline (age 12.71 ± 1.48) and follow-up (14.88 ± 1.53 years). Psychological assessments were collected at both timepoints. Longitudinal analyses were carried out with BOLD signal changes during ABM recall and psychopathology to investigate change over time. In both groups there was relative stability of the ABM brain network, with some developmental maturational changes observed in cortical midline structures (ventromedial PFC (vmPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (pCC), and retrosplenial cortex (rSC). Significantly increased activation of the right rSC was observed only in the MT group, which was associated with improved psychological functioning. Baseline group differences in relation to hippocampal functioning, were not detected at follow-up. This study provides preliminary empirical evidence of functional developmental plasticity in children with documented maltreatment experience using fMRI. This suggests that altered patterns of brain function, associated with maltreatment experience, are not fixed and may reflect the potential to track a neural basis of resilience.

Resting-state functional connectivity patterns associated with childhood maltreatment in a large bicentric cohort of adults with and without major depression

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment (CM) represents a potent risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD), including poorer treatment response. Altered resting-state connectivity in the fronto-limbic system has been reported in maltreated individuals. However, previous results in smaller samples differ largely regarding localization and direction of effects.

METHODS

We included healthy and depressed samples [n = 624 participants with MDD; n = 701 healthy control (HC) participants] that underwent resting-state functional MRI measurements and provided retrospective self-reports of maltreatment using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. A-priori defined regions of interest [ROI; amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)] were used to calculate seed-to-voxel connectivities.

RESULTS

No significant associations between maltreatment and resting-state connectivity of any ROI were found across MDD and HC participants and no interaction effect with diagnosis became significant. Investigating MDD patients only yielded maltreatment-associated increased connectivity between the amygdala and dorsolateral frontal areas [pFDR < 0.001; η2partial = 0.050; 95%-CI (0.023-0.085)]. This effect was robust across various sensitivity analyses and was associated with concurrent and previous symptom severity. Particularly strong amygdala-frontal associations with maltreatment were observed in acutely depressed individuals [n = 264; pFDR < 0.001; η2partial = 0.091; 95%-CI (0.038-0.166)). Weaker evidence - not surviving correction for multiple ROI analyses - was found for altered supracallosal ACC connectivity in HC individuals associated with maltreatment.

CONCLUSIONS

The majority of previous resting-state connectivity correlates of CM could not be replicated in this large-scale study. The strongest evidence was found for clinically relevant maltreatment associations with altered adult amygdala-dorsolateral frontal connectivity in depression. Future studies should explore the relevance of this pathway for a maltreated subgroup of MDD patients.

The influence of childhood maltreatment on trait depression in patients with major depressive disorder: A moderated mediation model of rumination and mindful attention awareness

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders. Individuals who were exposed to childhood maltreatment might be an especially vulnerable group and were more likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for depression than those who were not. Trait depression refers to a personality trait predisposition to depression, expressed as the frequency of symptoms rather than a transient depressive mood state. Clarifying the relationship between childhood maltreatment and trait depression in patients with MDD has therefore become an important field of research. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF), Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS), State-Trait Depression Scale (ST-DEP), and Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) were used as research instruments. SPSS 23.0 statistical software was used for statistical analysis and examined the moderated mediation models. A total of 288 patients with MDD were included in this study. After standardization of the variables, the model revealed childhood maltreatment was positively associated with trait depression (β = 0.215, p < 0.001) and that rumination partially mediated the effect between childhood trauma and trait depression. Mindfulness moderated the association between rumination and trait depression in depressed patients (β = 0.171, p < 0.001). Simple slope tests showed that rumination significantly predicted trait depression in patients with high levels of mindfulness (bsimple = 0.460, p < 0.001, 95%CI = [0.339, 0.581]), while this predictive effect was not significant in patients with low levels (bsimple = 0.119, p = 0.097, 95%CI = [-0.022, 0.261]). After adding mediating variables, we found that the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on trait depression was both directly and indirectly through the patients' own ruminative levels. However, mindfulness performed a critical moderating role in the overall mediating model, aggravating the negative impact of childhood maltreatment on trait depression. There are several limitations in this study: the history of childhood maltreatment was reviewed and reported; the MAAS was a single-dimensional questionnaire that fails to measure the content of other mindfulness factors; cross-sectional data could not be used to infer the causal relationship between variables.

Social Safety Theory: Conceptual foundation, underlying mechanisms, and future directions

Classic theories of stress and health are largely based on assumptions regarding how different psychosocial stressors influence biological processes that, in turn, affect human health and behavior. Although theoretically rich, this work has yielded little consensus and led to numerous conceptual, measurement, and reproducibility issues. Social Safety Theory aims to address these issues by using the primary goal and regulatory logic of the human brain and immune system as the basis for specifying the social-environmental situations to which these systems should respond most strongly to maximize reproductive success and survival. This analysis gave rise to the integrated, multi-level formulation described herein, which transforms thinking about stress biology and provides a biologically based, evolutionary account for how and why experiences of social safety and social threat are strongly related to health, well-being, aging, and longevity. In doing so, the theory advances a testable framework for investigating the biopsychosocial roots of health disparities as well as how health-relevant biopsychosocial processes crystalize over time and how perceptions of the social environment interact with childhood microbial environment, birth cohort, culture, air pollution, genetics, sleep, diet, personality, and self-harm to affect health. The theory also highlights several interventions for reducing social threat and promoting resilience.

Preliminary findings on the effect of childhood trauma on the functional connectivity of the anterior cingulate cortex subregions in major depressive disorder

Objectives

Childhood trauma (CT) is a known risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD), but the mechanisms linking CT and MDD remain unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of CT and depression diagnosis on the subregions of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in MDD patients.

Methods

The functional connectivity (FC) of ACC subregions was evaluated in 60 first-episode, drug-naïve MDD patients (40 with moderate-to-severe and 20 with no or low CT), and 78 healthy controls (HC) (19 with moderate-to-severe and 59 with no or low CT). The correlations between the anomalous FC of ACC subregions and the severity of depressive symptoms and CT were investigated.

Results

Individuals with moderate-to severe CT exhibited increased FC between the caudal ACC and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) than individuals with no or low CT, regardless of MDD diagnosis. MDD patients showed lower FC between the dorsal ACC and the superior frontal gyrus (SFG) and MFG. They also showed lower FC between the subgenual/perigenual ACC and the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and angular gyrus (ANG) than the HCs, regardless of CT severity. The FC between the left caudal ACC and the left MFG mediated the correlation between the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) total score and HAMD-cognitive factor score in MDD patients.

Conclusion

Functional changes of caudal ACC mediated the correlation between CT and MDD. These findings contribute to our understanding of the neuroimaging mechanisms of CT in MDD.

Neural effects of childhood maltreatment on dynamic large-scale brain networks in major depressive disorder

Emerging evidence suggests that childhood maltreatment (CM) alters trajectories of brain development to affect network architecture and is a risk factor for the development and maintenance of depression. The current study aimed to explore the association between CM and depressive severity on the large-scale resting-state networks (RSNs) level in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and explored the network basis of clinical symptoms. 42 healthy controls without childhood maltreatment, 13 healthy controls with CM, 35 MDD without CM and 50 MDD with CM were included in the study population. Group differences in ten large-scale RSNs, associations between CM and depressive symptom dimensions and network variables were tested. And we explored whether symptom-related networks might discriminate between the four groups. We found one-versus-all-others-network showed an inverted U-shaped curve across groups. Network variables were significantly associated with Hamilton Depression Scale subscores and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire subscores. Different symptoms showed different imaging patterns, and overlapping connections of patterns had better ability to distinguish groups. Our findings suggest that CM could lead to significant changes in both network measures and connections in healthy individuals and MDD. These results deepen our understanding of the neuroimaging mechanisms of CM and MDD.

Resting state brain dynamics: Associations with childhood sexual abuse and major depressive disorder

Early life stress (ELS) and major depressive disorder (MDD) share neural network abnormalities. However, it is unclear how ELS and MDD may separately and/or jointly relate to brain networks, and whether neural differences exist between depressed individuals with vs without ELS. Moreover, prior work evaluated static versus dynamic network properties, a critical gap considering brain networks show changes in coordinated activity over time. Seventy-one unmedicated females with and without childhood sexual abuse (CSA) histories and/or MDD completed a resting state scan and a stress task in which cortisol and affective ratings were collected. Recurring functional network co-activation patterns (CAPs) were examined and time in CAP (number of times each CAP is expressed) and transition frequencies (transitioning between different CAPs) were computed. The effects of MDD and CSA on CAP metrics were examined and CAP metrics were correlated with depression and stress-related variables. Results showed that MDD, but not CSA, related to CAP metrics. Specifically, individuals with MDD (N = 35) relative to HCs (N = 36), spent more time in a posterior default mode (DMN)-frontoparietal network (FPN) CAP and transitioned more frequently between posterior DMN-FPN and prototypical DMN CAPs. Across groups, more time spent in a posterior DMN-FPN CAP and greater DMN-FPN and prototypical DMN CAP transition frequencies were linked to higher rumination. Imbalances between the DMN and the FPN appear central to MDD and might contribute to MDD-related cognitive dysfunction, including rumination. Unexpectedly, CSA did not modulate such dysfunctions, a finding that needs to be replicated by future studies with larger sample sizes.

Aberrant brain connectivity is associated with childhood maltreatment in individuals with major depressive disorder

Although childhood maltreatment confers a high risk for the development of major depressive disorder, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this connection remain unknown. The present study sought to identify the specific resting-state networks associated with childhood maltreatment. We recruited major depressive disorder patients with and without a history of childhood maltreatment (n = 31 and n = 30, respectively) and healthy subjects (n = 80). We used independent component analysis to compute inter- and intra- network connectivity. We found that individuals with major depressive disorder and childhood maltreatment could be characterized by the following network disconnectivity model relative to healthy subjects: (i) decreased intra-network connectivity in the left frontoparietal network and increased intra-network connectivity in the right frontoparietal network, (ii) decreased inter-network connectivity in the posterior default mode network-auditory network, posterior default mode network-limbic system, posterior default mode network-anterior default mode network, auditory network-medial visual network, lateral visual network - medial visual network, medial visual network-sensorimotor network, medial visual network - anterior default mode network, occipital pole visual network-dorsal attention network, and posterior default mode network-anterior default mode network, and (iii) increased inter-network connectivity in the sensorimotor network-ventral attention network, and dorsal attention network-ventral attention network. Moreover, we found significant correlations between the severity of childhood maltreatment and the intra-network connectivity of the frontoparietal network. Our study demonstrated that childhood maltreatment is integrally associated with aberrant network architecture in patients with major depressive disorder.

Childhood Threat Is Associated With Lower Resting-State Connectivity Within a Central Visceral Network

Childhood adversity is associated with altered or dysregulated stress reactivity; these altered patterns of physiological functioning persist into adulthood. Evidence from both preclinical animal models and human neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experience differentially influences stressor-evoked activity within central visceral neural circuits proximally involved in the control of stress responses, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and amygdala. However, the relationship between childhood adversity and the resting-state connectivity of this central visceral network remains unclear. To this end, we examined relationships between childhood threat and childhood socioeconomic deprivation, the resting-state connectivity between our regions of interest (ROIs), and affective symptom severity and diagnoses. We recruited a transdiagnostic sample of young adult males and females (n = 100; mean age = 27.28, SD = 3.99; 59 females) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and symptom severity across multiple affective disorders. Resting-state data were acquired using a 7.2-min functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sequence; noted ROIs were applied as masks to determine ROI-to-ROI connectivity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood traumatic events and abuse. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education level). Covarying for age, race and sex, greater childhood threat was significantly associated with lower BNST-PVN, amygdala-sgACC and PVN-sgACC connectivity. No significant relationships were found between SED and resting-state connectivity. BNST-PVN connectivity was associated with the number of lifetime affective diagnoses. Exposure to threat during early development may entrain altered patterns of resting-state connectivity between these stress-related ROIs in ways that contribute to dysregulated neural and physiological responses to stress and subsequent affective psychopathology.

Childhood Maltreatment, Automatic Negative Thoughts, and Resilience: The Protective Roles of Culture and Genes

Resilience, a psychological trait conceptualized as the ability to recover from setbacks, can be weakened by childhood maltreatment, which comprises childhood abuse and childhood neglect. The current study aimed to investigate whether childhood maltreatment could increase automatic negative thoughts (ANT), thus weakening resilience. Furthermore, as psychological characteristics are commonly subject to the moderating effects of cultural context and biology, the study also explored whether and how cultural and genetic factors separately interact with childhood maltreatment to predict resilience. In study 1, the participants comprised 237 American and 347 Chinese individuals; study 2 included 428 genotyped Chinese individuals. We combined regression, mediation, moderation, and machine learning methods to test the mediating effect of ANT on the link between childhood maltreatment and resilience as well as the moderating roles of culture and genetics. Study 1 found that both childhood abuse and childhood neglect increased ANT and thus weakened resilience. In addition, the ANT-mediating effects of childhood neglect were stronger in American than Chinese participants. In Study 2, using the leave-one-out approach, we constructed two separate prediction models based on 22 and 16 important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and we found that the interaction between childhood abuse/neglect and polygenic scores based on important SNPs could predict ANT. The mediating effects of ANT on the relationship between childhood abuse/neglect and resilience were significant for participants with low polygenic scores but not for those with high polygenic scores. In conclusion, both the cultural environment and individual genetic makeup moderated the mediating effects of ANT on the association between childhood maltreatment and resilience. These findings indicated the roles of culture and genetics in protecting against the adverse effects of childhood maltreatment on resilience.

Mind wandering and depression: A status report

While many clinical studies and overviews on the contribution of rumination to depression exist, relatively little information regarding the role of mind wandering (MW) in general is available. Therefore, it remains an open question whether patterns of MW are altered in depression and, if so, how these alterations are related to rumination. Here, we review and discuss studies investigating MW in cohorts, showing either a clinically significant depression or with clinically significant disorders accompanied by depressive symptoms. These studies yield first tentative insights into major issues. However, further investigations are required, specifically studies which: i) compare patients with a primary diagnosis of major depression with healthy and appropriately matched controls, ii) implement measures of both MW and rumination, iii) are based on experience sampling (in combination with other key approaches), iv) compare experience sampling during daily life, resting state and attentional tasks, v) explore possible biases in the assessment of MW, vi) acquire data not only related to the propensity and contents of MW, but also regarding meta-awareness and intentionality.

Testing the construct validity of competing measurement approaches to probed mind-wandering reports

Psychology faces a measurement crisis, and mind-wandering research is not immune. The present study explored the construct validity of probed mind-wandering reports (i.e., reports of task-unrelated thought [TUT]) with a combined experimental and individual-differences approach. We examined laboratory data from over 1000 undergraduates at two U.S. institutions, who responded to one of four different thought-probe types across two cognitive tasks. We asked a fundamental measurement question: Do different probe types yield different results, either in terms of average reports (average TUT rates, TUT-report confidence ratings), or in terms of TUT-report associations, such as TUT rate or confidence stability across tasks, or between TUT reports and other consciousness-related constructs (retrospective mind-wandering ratings, executive-control performance, and broad questionnaire trait assessments of distractibility–restlessness and positive-constructive daydreaming)? Our primary analyses compared probes that asked subjects to report on different dimensions of experience: TUT-content probes asked about what they’d been mind-wandering about, TUT-intentionality probes asked about why they were mind-wandering, and TUT-depth probes asked about the extent (on a rating scale) of their mind-wandering. Our secondary analyses compared thought-content probes that did versus didn’t offer an option to report performance-evaluative thoughts. Our findings provide some “good news”—that some mind-wandering findings are robust across probing methods—and some “bad news”—that some findings are not robust across methods and that some commonly used probing methods may not tell us what we think they do. Our results lead us to provisionally recommend content-report probes rather than intentionality- or depth-report probes for most mind-wandering research.

Mind-Wandering in Adolescents Predicts Worse Affect and Is Linked to Aberrant Default Mode Network-Salience Network Connectivity

OBJECTIVE

Understanding the fluctuating emotional and cognitive states of adolescents with depressive symptoms requires fine-grained and naturalistic measurements. This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to investigate the affective correlates and consequences of mind-wandering in adolescents with anhedonia (AH) and typically developing (TD) controls. In addition, we examined the association between mind-wandering and resting state functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a core hub of the default mode network (DMN) linked to internally oriented mentation, and networks linked to attentional control (dorsal attention network [DAN]) and affect/salience detection (salience network [SN]).

METHOD

A total of 65 adolescents, aged 12 to 18 years (TD = 36; AH = 29), completed a resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan and subsequently used a smartphone application for ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data collection (2-3 times/d for 5 days). Each survey (N = 678) prompted adolescents to report on their current positive and negative affect (PA and NA), cognition, and activity.

RESULTS

The frequency of mind-wandering was higher for AH (70.0% of EMA samples) relative to TD (59.2%) participants, and the participants with AH were more likely to mind-wander to unpleasant content. Mind-wandering was associated with higher concurrent NA, even when controlling for plausible confounds (eg, current activity, social companion, rumination). Time-lagged analyses revealed a bidirectional association between mind-wandering and PA. Greater levels of mind-wandering within the AH group were associated with stronger mPFC-SN/DAN connectivity.

CONCLUSION

Rates of mind-wandering were high, especially among adolescents with anhedonia, and predicted worse affect. The relation between mind-wandering and enhanced mPFC-SN coupling may reflect heightened bottom-up influence of affective and sensory salience on DMN-mediated internally oriented thought.

Translating the neuroscience of adverse childhood experiences to inform policy and foster population-level resilience

Imaging methods have elucidated several neurobiological correlates of traumatic and adverse experiences in childhood. This knowledge base may foster the development of programs and policies that aim to build resilience and adaptation in children and youth facing adversity. Translation of this research requires both effective and accurate communication of the science. This review begins with a discussion of integrating the language used to describe and identify childhood adversity and their outcomes to clarify the translation of neurodevelopmental findings. An integrative term, Traumatic and Adverse Childhood Experiences (TRACEs+) is proposed, alongside a revised adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) pyramid that emphasizes that a diversity of adverse experiences may lead to a common outcome and that a diversity of outcomes may result from a common adverse experience. This term facilitates linkages between the ACEs literature and the emerging neurodevelopmental knowledge surrounding the effect of traumatic adverse childhood experiences on youth in terms of the knowns and unknowns about neural connectivity in youth samples. How neuroscience findings may lead directly or indirectly to specific techniques or targets for intervention and the reciprocal nature of these relationships is addressed. Potential implications of the neuroscience for policy and intervention at multiple levels are illustrated using existing policy programs that may be informed by (and inform) neuroscience. The need for transdisciplinary models to continue to move the science to action closes the article. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: A Systematic Review

An extensive literature on childhood adversity and neurodevelopment has emerged over the past decade. We evaluate two conceptual models of adversity and neurodevelopment-the dimensional model of adversity and stress acceleration model-in a systematic review of 109 studies using MRI-based measures of neural structure and function in children and adolescents. Consistent with the dimensional model, children exposed to threat had reduced amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and hippocampal volume and heightened amygdala activation to threat in a majority of studies; these patterns were not observed consistently in children exposed to deprivation. In contrast, reduced volume and altered function in frontoparietal regions were observed consistently in children exposed to deprivation but not children exposed to threat. Evidence for accelerated development in amygdala-mPFC circuits was limited but emerged in other metrics of neurodevelopment. Progress in charting neurodevelopmental consequences of adversity requires larger samples, longitudinal designs, and more precise assessments of adversity.

Neurocognitive Adaptation and Mental Health Vulnerability Following Maltreatment: The Role of Social Functioning

Childhood maltreatment is associated with a lifetime increase in risk of mental health disorder. We propose that such vulnerability may stem in large part from altered patterns of social functioning. Here, we highlight key findings from the psychological and epidemiological literature indicating that early maltreatment experience compromises social functioning and attenuates social support in ways that increase mental health vulnerability. We then review the extant neuroimaging studies of children and adolescents, focusing on three domains implicated in social functioning: threat processing, reward processing, and emotion regulation. We discuss how adaptations in these domains may increase latent vulnerability to mental health problems by impacting on social functioning via increased stress susceptibility as well as increased stress generation. Finally, we explore how computational psychiatry approaches, alongside systematically reported measures of social functioning, can complement studies of neural function in the creation of a mechanistic framework aimed at informing approaches to prevention and intervention.

Spontaneous Thoughts and Brain Connectivity: Possible Links Between Early Maltreatment and Later Depression

Maltreatment (MT) during childhood wreaks lasting havoc on the developing central nervous system and is one of the most salient risk factors for numerous psychiatric disorders, including depression.¹ Early intervention and prevention strategies to improve outcomes of youth who have experienced MT are sorely needed; advancement in this area will require a deeper understanding of the neurobiological trajectory between the occurrence of MT and the later emergence of illness. One approach is to select neurobiological measures that are known to be impaired in the fully fledged disorder and use them to assess youth with a history of MT who have not yet shown impairment. In depression research, an emerging research area is to study spontaneously generated thoughts that occur while awake but at unstructured times, when thoughts tend to wander. Mind wandering has been linked with intelligence, creative thought generation, and resting-state functional connectivity within the default mode network.² However, in depression, these wandering thoughts can get stuck on negative content^3,4 and could represent a core feature of the illness. Therefore, examination of spontaneously generated thoughts, and their neural correlates, is a promising avenue for research seeking precursors of depression in youth with a history of MT.