Accumbofrontal tract integrity is related to early life adversity and feedback learning

Abstract

Abuse, neglect, exposure to violence, and other forms of early life adversity (ELA) are incredibly common and significantly impact physical and mental development. While important progress has been made in understanding the impacts of ELA on behavior and the brain, the preponderance of past work has primarily centered on threat processing and vigilance while ignoring other potentially critical neurobehavioral processes, such as reward-responsiveness and learning. To advance our understanding of potential mechanisms linking ELA and poor mental health, we center in on structural connectivity of the corticostriatal circuit, specifically accumbofrontal white matter tracts. Here, in a sample of 77 youth (Mean age = 181 months), we leveraged rigorous measures of ELA, strong diffusion neuroimaging methodology, and computational modeling of reward learning. Linking these different forms of data, we hypothesized that higher ELA would be related to lower quantitative anisotropy in accumbofrontal white matter. Furthermore, we predicted that lower accumbofrontal quantitative anisotropy would be related to differences in reward learning. Our primary predictions were confirmed, but similar patterns were not seen in control white matter tracts outside of the corticostriatal circuit. Examined collectively, our work is one of the first projects to connect ELA to neural and behavioral alterations in reward-learning, a critical potential mechanism linking adversity to later developmental challenges. This could potentially provide windows of opportunity to address the effects of ELA through interventions and preventative programming.

Impact of Early Life Stress on Reward Circuit Function and Regulation

“…For example, in a large cohort of adults ( N = 3036 ), higher childhood adversity exposure was associated with smaller caudate volumes ( 71 ). Childhood trauma is also related to lower white matter integrity in fiber tracts connecting the caudate, ventral striatum, and prefrontal cortex ( 46 , 72 , 73 ). However, rodent models of ELS (discussed below) suggest changes in reward circuitry are at the level of excitatory and neuromodulatory signaling rather than gross structural changes.…”

Trajectories of cortical structures associated with stress across adolescence: a bivariate latent change score approach

“…At a broad level, we noted only modest associations between stress exposure and the three brain morphometrics measured in our study. This stands in stark contrast with the widespread reductions in frontoparietal regions reported elsewhere (Baker et al., 2012 ; Cohen et al., 2006 ; Gold et al., 2016 ; Hodel et al., 2015 ; Kelly et al., 2013 ; Kennedy et al., 2021 ; Mackes et al., 2020 ; McLaughlin et al., 2014 ; Teicher, 2006 ; Thomaes et al., 2010 ). There are multiple explanations for these potential discrepancies.…”

Enduring effect of abuse: Childhood maltreatment links to altered theory of mind network among adults

“…That is, early maltreatment experiences disrupted neural development, particularly in the frontoparietal system (i.e., cognitive ToM) governing response inhibition and cognitive control (Chen et al, 2013), which in turn, might result in greater attentional impulsive tendencies later in life. In fact, previous studies have documented similar findings that the white matter tract (e.g., cingulum and accumbofrontal) integrity mediated the association between child abuse and trait anxiety (Tendolkar, Martensson, Kuhn, Klumpers, & Fernandez, 2018) and negative feedback sensitivity (Kennedy et al, 2021). It suggested that CM triggered neurocognitive alterations, especially, parietal–frontal circuits alteration that heightens impulsivity and increases vulnerability to risky behavior.…”