Neural Response to Social Rejection in Children With Early Separation Experiences

Puetz, Vanessa B.; Kohn, Nils; Dahmen, Brigitte; Zvyagintsev, Mikhail; Schüppen, André; Schultz, Robert T.; Heim, Christine; Fink, Gereon R.; Herpertz‐Dahlmann, Beate; Konrad, Kerstin

doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2014.09.004

Cited by 62 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(51 reference statements)

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“…First, and perhaps most persuasively, it may reflect a pattern of functional avoidance relating to shallower depth of processing in maltreated children during incidental and conscious processing of threat‐related stimuli. It is notable that when maltreated children experience rejection (during the ‘Cyberball’ social rejection paradigm), they are less able to engage neural regions involved in regulation compared to their nonmaltreated peers (Puetz et al., ). There are a number of findings from the broader literature, which support the possibility that the pattern of hypoactivation in the current study reflects an avoidant coping style.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered neural response to rejection‐related words in children exposed to maltreatment

Puetz

Viding

Palmer

et al. 2016

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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BackgroundChildren exposed to maltreatment show neural sensitivity to facial cues signalling threat. However, little is known about how maltreatment influences the processing of social threat cues more broadly, and whether atypical processing of social threat cues relates to psychiatric risk.MethodsForty‐one 10‐ to 14‐year‐old children underwent a social rejection‐themed emotional Stroop task during functional magnetic resonance imaging: 21 children with a documented history of maltreatment (11 F) and 19 comparison children with no maltreatment history (11 F). Groups were matched on age, pubertal status, gender, IQ, socioeconomic status, ethnicity and reading ability. Classic colour Stroop stimuli were also administered in the same paradigm to investigate potential differences in general cognitive control.ResultsCompared with their peers, children who had experienced maltreatment showed reduced activation in the Rejection versus Neutral condition, across circuitry previously implicated in abuse‐related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including the left anterior insula, extending into left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex/orbitofrontal cortex; left amygdala; left inferior parietal cortex (STS); and bilateral visual association cortex, encompassing the cuneus and lingual gyrus. No group differences in neural or behavioural responses were found for the classic colour Stroop conditions. Significant negative associations between activity in bilateral cuneus and STS during the rejection‐themed Stroop and higher self‐reported PTSD symptomatology, including dissociation, were observed in children exposed to maltreatment.ConclusionOur findings indicate a pattern of altered neural response to social rejection cues in maltreated children. Compared to their peers, these children displayed relative hypoactivation to rejection cues in regions previously associated with PTSD, potentially reflecting an avoidant coping response. It is suggested that such atypical processing of social threat may index latent vulnerability to future psychopathology in general and PTSD in particular.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered neural response to rejection‐related words in children exposed to maltreatment

Puetz

Viding

Palmer

et al. 2016

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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“…Twenty-six children who were never separated from their biological parents and had never been in contact with Child Protective Services, with carefully matched demographic variables, served as a control group (see also [35,36]). The children's histories before placement were assessed by trained staff members who conducted semistructured qualitative interviews [37] with the foster/adoptive parents to explore the preplacement history, the main reason for separation, and the types of maltreatment; all available medical records were also inspected.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The structural images were acquired in a session with an overlapping sample of children that also collected functional task-based and diffusion-tensor-imaging (DTI) data, which have been reported previously [35,36]. Cortical reconstruction and volumetric segmentation were performed using the freely available FreeSurfer image analysis pipeline v5.3 (http://surfer.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/) [42].…”

Section: Mri Acquisition and Volumetric Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Early-Life Adversity on Hippocampal Structures and Associated HPA Axis Functions

Dahmen¹,

Puetz

Scharke

et al. 2017

Dev Neurosci

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Early-life adversity (ELA) is one of the major risk factors for serious mental and physical health risks later in life. ELA has been associated with dysfunctional neurodevelopment, especially in brain structures such as the hippocampus, and with dysfunction of the stress system, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Children who have experienced ELA are also more likely to suffer from mental health disorders such as depression later in life. The exact interplay of aberrant neurodevelopment and HPA axis dysfunction as risks for psychopathology is not yet clear. We investigated volume differences in the bilateral hippocampus and in stress-sensitive hippocampal subfields, behavior problems, and diurnal cortisol activity in 24 children who had experienced documented ELA (including out-of-home placement) in a circumscribed duration of adversity only in their first 3 years of life in comparison to data on 25 control children raised by their biological parents. Hippocampal volumes and stress-sensitive hippocampal subfields (Cornu ammonis [CA]1, CA3, and the granule-cell layer of the dentate gyrus [GCL-DG]) were significantly smaller in children who had experienced ELA, taking psychiatric diagnoses and dimensional psychopathological symptoms into account. ELA moderated the relationship between left hippocampal volume and cortisol: in the control group, hippocampal volumes were not related to diurnal cortisol, while in ELA children, a positive linear relationship between left hippocampal volume and diurnal cortisol was present. Our findings show that ELA is associated with altered development of the hippocampus, and an altered relationship between hippocampal volume and HPA axis activity in youth in care, even after they have lived in stable and caring foster family environments for years. Altered hippocampal development after ELA could thus be associated with a risk phenotype for the development of psychiatric disorders later in life.

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“…gender: Bolling et al, 2012, and in- vs out-group members: Masten et al, 2011d). While most of these studies have used undergraduate convenience samples aged approximately between 18 and 25 years, a number of studies have also focused specifically on developing (primarily adolescent) samples to examine developmental correlates of social exclusion (Bolling et al, 2011a; Falk et al, 2014; Puetz et al, 2014; Will et al, 2016). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies

2017

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Given the recent surge in functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion, the current study employed activation likelihood estimation (ALE) based meta-analyses to identify brain regions that have consistently been implicated across different experimental paradigms used to investigate exclusion. We also examined the neural correlates underlying Cyberball, the most commonly used paradigm to study exclusion, as well as differences in exclusion-related activation between developing (7–18 years of age, from pre-adolescence up to late adolescence) and emerging adult (broadly defined as undergraduates, including late adolescence and young adulthood) samples. Results revealed involvement of the bilateral medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, right precuneus and left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex across the different paradigms used to examine social exclusion; similar activation patterns were identified when restricting the analysis to Cyberball studies. Investigations into age-related effects revealed that ventrolateral prefrontal activations identified in the full sample were driven by (i.e. present in) developmental samples, while medial prefrontal activations were driven by emerging adult samples. In addition, the right ventral striatum was implicated in exclusion, but only in developmental samples. Subtraction analysis revealed significantly greater activation likelihood in striatal and ventrolateral prefrontal clusters in the developmental samples as compared to emerging adults, though the opposite contrast failed to identify any significant regions. Findings integrate the knowledge accrued from functional neuroimaging studies on social exclusion to date, highlighting involvement of regulatory lateral prefrontal regions and midline structures involved in social cognitive and self-evaluative processes across experimental paradigms and ages, as well as limbic structures in developing samples specifically.

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Neural Response to Social Rejection in Children With Early Separation Experiences

Cited by 62 publications

References 52 publications

Altered neural response to rejection‐related words in children exposed to maltreatment

Altered neural response to rejection‐related words in children exposed to maltreatment

Effects of Early-Life Adversity on Hippocampal Structures and Associated HPA Axis Functions

Neural correlates of social exclusion across ages: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional MRI studies

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