Greater maltreatment severity is associated with smaller brain volume with implication for intellectual ability in young children,Neurobiology of Stress

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Greater maltreatment severity is associated with smaller brain volume with implication for intellectual ability in young children
Neurobiology of Stress ( IF 5 ) Pub Date : 2023-09-23 , DOI: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2023.100576
Judith Joseph ₁ , Claudia Buss _{1,

2} , Andrea Knop ₁ , Karin de Punder ₃ , Sibylle M Winter ₄ , Birgit Spors ₅ , Elisabeth Binder ₆ , John-Dylan Haynes _{7,

8,

9} , Christine Heim _{1,

10}

Affiliation

Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institute of Medical Psychology, Berlin, Germany.
Development, Health, and Disease Research Program, Department of Pediatrics, University of California, Irvine, Orange, CA, USA.
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Berlin, Germany.
Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Department of Radiology, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Translational Research in Psychiatry, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany.
Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany.
NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, Berlin, Germany.

Background

Childhood maltreatment profoundly alters trajectories of brain development, promoting markedly increased long-term health risks and impaired intellectual development. However, the immediate impact of maltreatment on brain development in children and the extent to which altered global brain volume contributes to intellectual development in children with maltreatment experience is currently unknown. We here utilized MRI data obtained from children within 6 months after the exposure to maltreatment to assess the association of maltreatment severity with global brain volume changes. We further assessed the association between maltreatment severity and intellectual development and tested for the mediating effect of brain volume on this association.

Method

We used structural MRI (3T) in a sample of 49 children aged 3–5 years with maltreatment exposure, i.e. emotional and physical abuse and/or neglect within 6 months, to characterize intracranial and tissue-specific volumes. Maltreatment severity was coded using the Maternal Interview for the Classification of Maltreatment. IQ was tested at study entry and after one year using the Snijders Oomen Nonverbal Test.

Results

Higher maltreatment severity was significantly correlated with smaller intracranial volume (r = -.393, p = .008), which was mainly driven by lower total brain volume (r = -.393, p = .008), which in turn was primarily due to smaller gray matter volume (r = -.454, p = .002). Furthermore, smaller gray matter volume was associated with lower IQ at study entry (r = -.548, p < .001) and predicted IQ one year later (r = -.493, p = .004.). The observed associations were independent of potential confounding variables, including height, socioeconomic status, age and sex.

Importance

We provide evidence that greater maltreatment severity in early childhood is related to smaller brain size at a very young age with significant consequences for intellectual ability, likely setting a path for far-reaching long-term disadvantages. Insights into the molecular and neural processes that underlie the impact of maltreatment on brain structure and function are urgently needed to derive mechanism-driven targets for early intervention.

中文翻译：

虐待的严重程度与脑容量较小有关，这对幼儿的智力能力有影响

背景

童年虐待深刻改变了大脑发育轨迹，导致长期健康风险显着增加，智力发育受损。然而，虐待对儿童大脑发育的直接影响以及整体脑容量变化对有虐待经历的儿童智力发育的影响程度目前尚不清楚。我们利用从遭受虐待后 6 个月内的儿童获得的 MRI 数据来评估虐待严重程度与整体脑容量变化的关系。我们进一步评估了虐待严重程度与智力发展之间的关联，并测试了脑容量对此关联的中介作用。

方法

我们对 49 名 3-5 岁儿童样本进行了结构 MRI (3T) 分析，这些儿童曾遭受过虐待，即在 6 个月内遭受过情感和身体虐待和/或忽视，以表征颅内和组织特异性体积。虐待严重程度是使用虐待分类的母亲访谈来编码的。在研究开始时和一年后，使用 Snijders Oomen 非语言测试对智商进行了测试。

结果

较高的虐待严重程度与较小的颅内容积显着相关（r = -.393，p = .008），这主要是由较低的总脑容量驱动的（r = -.393，p = .008），而这又主要是由于由于灰质体积较小（r = -.454，p = .002）。此外，较小的灰质体积与进入研究时较低的智商相关（r = -.548，p < .001），并预测一年后的智商（r = -.493，p = .004。）。观察到的关联与潜在的混杂变量无关，包括身高、社会经济地位、年龄和性别。