Long-term effects of childhood trauma subtypes on adult brain function

Childhood trauma is prevalent in our society, whereas little is known about why and how different forms of early traumatic experiences exert long-term effects on differential brain function in adulthood.

This study aimed to scale experience-specific neural correlates of distinct subtypes of childhood trauma.

We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 216 adults with different degrees of childhood trauma. Graph analysis was combined with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire to inspect the impact of distinct subtypes of childhood trauma on the brain.

We found that childhood trauma experiences have a detrimental effect on depression and anxiety behavior. On one hand, childhood neglect scores were positively associated with network transmission efficiency of regions involved in cognitive and executive functions, such as temporal lobe, insular cortex, and parahippocampal gyrus. On the other hand, childhood abuse scores were tightly linked to functional reorganizations of regions mediated by immature ego defense system and damaged emotion representation. Specifically, the abuse scores were positively associated with network transmission efficiency of the visual, auditory, linguistic, and motor cortex. Isolated communications in temporal cortex and supplementary motor cortex were related to emotional and physical abuse scores.

Our data showed the differential associations of abusive and neglectful experiences with brain function in adulthood. These experience-specific associations could underpin potentially differential risks of specific forms of psychiatric sequelae in adulthood. More attentions to maltreated children and timely psychological treatment are needed to reduce the incidence of psychosis.