Additional Insights into the Relationship Between Brain Network Architecture and Susceptibility and Resilience to the Psychiatric Sequelae of Childhood Maltreatment

Abstract

Childhood maltreatment is associated with an increased risk for psychiatric and substance use disorders. However, some maltreated individuals appear resilient to these consequences while manifesting the same array of brain changes as maltreated individuals with psychopathology. Hence, a critical issue has been to identify compensatory brain alterations in these resilient individuals. We recently reported that maltreatment is associated with a more vulnerable structural brain network architecture. Resilient individuals have this same vulnerability but appeared to be able to effectively compensate due to reduced nodal efficiency (ability of a node to influence the global network) in 9 specific brain regions that moderate the relationship between maltreatment and psychopathology. Following up, we now report that network vulnerability increases progressively during late adolescence to plateau at about 21 years of age, which may help to explain age of onset of psychopathology. Further, we found that network vulnerability was most significantly affected by parental verbal abuse between 16 and 18 years of age and number of types of maltreatment during childhood. Asymptomatic individuals with no history of psychopathology had more prominent alterations in nodal efficiency than asymptomatic individuals with prior history, who specifically showed reduced nodal efficiency in the right amygdala and right subcallosal gyrus. Experiencing inadequate financial sufficiency during childhood increased the risk of susceptibility versus resilience by 2.98-fold (95% CI 1.49-5.97, p = 0.002) after adjusting for differences in exposure to maltreatment. Interestingly, adequate-to-higher financial sufficiency appeared to be protective and was associated with reduced nodal efficiency in the right postcentral gyrus and subcallosal gyrus "resilience" nodes. Keywords Childhood maltreatment. Abuse and neglect. Resilience. Brain networks. Graph theory. Neuroimaging Childhood maltreatment is the most important risk factor for psychopathology. Adverse childhood experiences in the form of maltreatment and household dysfunction account for about 33%, 54%, 64%, and 67% of the population attributable risk for anxiety disorders (

Inaugural Editorial

“…Kirsch, Nemeroff, & Lippard (2020) discuss the relationship between early life adversity, neurobiological adaptations, and subsequent adolescent and adult substance use disorders, discussing the potential for improved prevention and treatment outcomes by identifying potential pathways involving genetic vulnerabilities associated with mood and anxiety disorders. Teicher, Ohashi, & Khan (2020) extend their previous research on a proposed network model to explain patterns of susceptibility or resilience to childhood adversity (Ohashi, Anderson, Bolger, Khan, McGreenery, & Teicher, 2019), showing that timing, type, and number of adverse experiences are predictive of psychiatric outcomes during late adolescence and early adulthood.…”

Recognizing the importance of childhood maltreatment as a critical factor in psychiatric diagnoses, treatment, research, prevention, and education

“…Ohashi et al [75] reported that symptomatic and asymptomatic maltreated individuals had the same constellation of global brain network abnormalities, but the asymptomatic group could be reliably distinguished from the symptomatic maltreated group, and from unexposed controls, based on the connectivity of nine specific brain regions. This is an intriguing observation as it suggests that effective treatments for psychiatric disorders in individuals with CM may not require reversing the neurobiological effects of CM but may occur through altering connectivity in specific brain regions to bring the nodal network architecture of susceptible individuals into line with that of their more resilient counterparts [75,76]. Of considerable interest is whether these are preexisting neurobiological differences that protect individuals from the psychiatric consequences of CM, or if they emerge over the course of time, and how they may be affected by protective factors and compensatory remedial environmental experiences [77,78].…”

Measuring types and timing of childhood maltreatment: The psychometric properties of the KERF-40+

“…Scores on the total scale range from 0 to 63, with higher scores reflecting more severe depressive symptoms. Criteria have been proposed to interpret the total score as reflecting mild (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19), moderate (20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28), or severe (29-63) depression [42]. In a subsample of the present sample which provided data on the BDI-II (N = 195), the BDI-II demonstrated excellent internal consistency, Cronbach's α = .96.…”

“…Moreover, the global measures of the US and Norwegian versions of the MACE have been shown to account for substantially more variance in mental health symptoms than the CTQ and ACE [8,9]. So far, the MACE has already been successfully employed in several studies targeting different sequelae of childhood maltreatment, such as alterations in brain structure, function, and connectivity [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32], aberrant neurocognitive functioning [33,34], deviant endocrine regulation as indicated by hair cortisol concentration [35], sleep disruptions [36], and different forms of psychopathology [37][38][39][40].…”