Early life adversity, such as abuse or neglect, has consistently been shown to be a significant risk factor for mental disorders. Some exposed individuals, however, show better than expected outcomes which may be described as resilience. Potential mechanisms underlying the association between early life adversity and psychopathology comprise altered social and emotional information processing, as well as altered reward processing. Even though it is evident that early life adversity can disrupt typical neurodevelopment, little is known about the neurobiological underpinnings of risk and resilience to early life adversity. This symposium will therefore focus on the neural mechanisms underlying risk and resilience after early life adversity and present data for healthy and clinical samples across different psychiatric diagnoses and across the lifespan.
Diana Armbruster-Genc will focus on reward and effort processing in maltreated children, its neural indices, and future internalising symptoms using computational models. The results of this study demonstrate longitudinally how altered effort processing may be associated with vulnerability and/or resilience to later mental illness in children and adolescents with exposure to early life adversity. Kerstin Konrad will show results from studies on the influence of early life adversity on social information processing in a sample of youth-in care with early life adversity. Noel Valencia will present transdiagnostic findings of alterations in resting-state functional connectivity (MRI) in a sample of adult individuals exposed to early life adversity with and without psychopathology. Finally, Katja Seitz will present results of an fMRI study in which the associations between intensity, timing and duration of different types of early life adversity and amygdala reactivity in response to threat-related faces were investigated in an adult transdiagnostic sample.
08:52 Uhr
The influence of early life adversity on social information processing in youth-in care
S. Niestroj (Aachen, DE)
09:14 Uhr
Associations between early life adversity and resting-state functional connectivity in adults with and without psychopathology
N. Valencia (Heidelberg, DE)
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N. Valencia (Heidelberg, DE)
Early life adversity (ELA) has been demonstrated to show associations with changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) across various mental disorders. In order to extend these findings beyond diagnostic categories we recruited a sample of participants suffering from three disorders related to ELA, namely, somatic symptom disorder (SSD), post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD), and major depressive disorder (MDD), as well as healthy controls. We expected to find decreases in rsFC between regions of interest (ROIs), such as the amygdala, the hippocampus, the anterior and posterior cingulate cortex (ACC, PCC), and prefrontal cortex (PFC) associated with higher self-reported levels of ELA across all diagnostic groups.
FMRI scans of 128 participants were analyzed with ROI-to-ROI and whole-brain Seed-to-Voxel analyses with retrospectively assessed ELA as predictor in a regression model.
While no significant associations were observed between ROIs, we revealed a pattern of decreased negative connectivity between the PCC and a cluster in the right inferior orbital PFC associated with higher levels of ELA. Exploratory analyses revealed further associations, for instance, between duration of exposure to ELA and decreased connectivity between the Default-Mode Network and regions of the visual cortex.
The observed decreases in connectivity could be interpreted as a decoupling of activity between these brain regions with increasing exposure to ELA.
In our study we have added to the evidence that ELA is associated with transdiagnostic changes in rsFC, especially fronto-cingular connectivity. The observed changes in connectivity between brain regions involved in emotion processing might also be linked to the emergence and maintenance of clinical symptoms in the studied disorders. Once better understood, these connectivity patterns might inform studies investigating neuromodulatory interventions or novel measures for monitoring treatment outcome.
09:36 Uhr
Neural threat processing and early life adversity in a transdiagnostic adult sample: do type, timing and duration of adverse childhood experiences matter?
K. Seitz (Heidelberg, DE)
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K. Seitz (Heidelberg, DE)
Early life adversity confers risk for multiple types of psychopathology, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depressive disorder (MDD) and somatic symptom disorder (SSD). One potential mechanism through which exposure to early life adversity could be translated into risk for adult psychopathology is a hypervigilance to interpersonal threat. Studies indicate that individuals with a history of early life adversity, both with and without mental disorders, exhibit a heightened amygdala reactivity to signs of interpersonal threat, such as angry and fearful faces. Most studies on the association between early life adversity and neural threat processing focus on differential effects of different types of early life adversity while failing to consider timing and duration of exposure, which is critical for determining sensitive periods. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the association between early life adversity and neural threat processing in a sample of individuals with and without mental disorders, specifically with regard to type, timing and duration of early adversities. In addition, the role of dissociation in the aforementioned association was explored. A total of 141 individuals with varying levels of early life adversity took part in this study, including individuals with PTSD (n = 34), MDD (n = 36), SSD (n = 35), and healthy individuals (n = 36). Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotional face-matching task, completed an interview measure assessing timing and duration of 10 types of early life adversity, the KERF-40+, and filled out a self-report measure of dissociative symptoms. Results of our conditional random forest regression and multiple regression analyses will be discussed with regard to whether retrospectively reported type, timing and duration of early life adversity as well as dissociative symptoms may help to predict neural threat processing in a transdiagnostic adult sample.