Anatomical and Neurochemical Correlates of Parental Verbal Abuse: A Combined MRS—Diffusion MRI Study

Abstract

Despite the critical impact of parental dialog on children who remain physically and psychologically dependent, most studies have focused on brain alterations in people exposed to moderate-to-high levels of emotional maltreatment with/without psychopathology. We measured metabolites in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC) acquired with single-voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and anatomical connectivity assessed with probabilistic tractography in 46 healthy young adults who experienced no-to-low level parental verbal abuse (paVA) during their childhood and adolescence. The partial least square regression (PLSR) model showed that individual variance of perceived paVA was associated with chemical properties and structural connectivity of pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC; prediction R2 = 0.23). The jackknife test was used to identify features that significantly contributed to the partial least square regression (PLSR) model; a negative association of paVA was found with myo-inositol concentration, anatomical connectivities with the right caudate and with the right transverse temporal gyrus. Of note, positive associations were also found with the left pars triangularis, left cuneus, right inferior temporal cortex, right entorhinal cortex and right amygdala. Our results showing both a negative association of frontal glial function and positive associations of anatomical connectivities in several networks associated with threat detection or visual information processing suggest both anatomical and neurochemical adaptive changes in medial frontolimbic networks to low-level paVA experiences.

White matter integrity moderates the relation between experienced childhood maltreatment and fathers’ behavioral response to infant crying

“…the uncinate fasciculus [UF]) were also confirmed in several studies (McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ; Meinert et al., 2019 ; Ohashi et al., 2017 ). Four recent studies confirmed structural changes in the cingulum or in fibers connecting the cingulum with other brain regions (Kim, et al., 2019 ; McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ; Meinert et al., 2019 ; Tendolkar et al., 2018 ), and in the CC (Jensen et al., 2018 ; Lim et al., 2019 ; McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ; Meinert et al., 2019 ). Only one study so far confirmed a relation between childhood maltreatment and hippocampal projections (McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ).…”

“…graduation of severity) in similar populations of healthy young adults have reported widespread associations between maltreatment and white matter integrity (e.g. Hanson et al., 2015 ; Jensen et al., 2018 ; Kim, et al., 2019 ; McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ; Ohashi et al., 2017 ; Tendolkar et al., 2018 ) and several of these studies looked at similar types and levels of abuse and neglect as in the study reported here (e.g. Hanson et al., 2015 ; McCarthy‐Jones et al., 2018 ; Tendolkar et al., 2018 ).…”

Anterior insula glutamate/glutamine is associated with psychopathology scores through overestimating errors

“…Finally, the generalized dice similarity coefficient as a measure of overlap was computed from the intersection and union of VOIs (Kim et al, 2019;Park et al, 2018). We used the Shen brain atlas (Shen et al, 2013), which consists of 268 regions of interest, including the AIC and mPFC.…”

Exploring Young Adulthood Psychopathology Networks Related to Depression Using Partial Correlation Network and Bayesian Network

“…Functional impairments during this period appear to persist for a substantial time after the remission of depression 5,6 . In addition, emotional adversities experienced before young adulthood cause structural [7][8][9] , functional 10,11 , and neurochemical 12 alterations in the brain. Therefore, various variables consisting of trans-diagnostic symptoms, related behavioral patterns, and current and past stresses may be intricately intertwined in young adulthood depression.…”