Parental childhood maltreatment associates with offspring left amygdala volume at early infancy

Abstract

Background: Childhood maltreatment exposure (CME) and related trauma could be considered some of psychiatry's greatest public health challenges. CME and early adversity have been associated with increased amygdala volume in exposed individuals. Emerging evidence implies that CME could also affect prenatal development of the offspring. Methods: As part of the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, we measured bilateral amygdala volumes from MR images in 76 healthy infants at 2 to 5 weeks of gestation corrected age and obtained the Trauma and Distress Scale (TADS) questionnaire from both parents. The associations between neonatal amygdala volumes and TADS scores were examined in stepwise regression models. Results: We found that maternal CME associated positively with infant left amygdala volume (p = .045) while the positive association for the paternal trauma score was only marginally significant (p = .099). Similar associations were not observed for the right amygdala. In the exploratory analyses, we used age ranges (0 to 6, 7 to 12, and 13 to 18 years) as estimate of the timing of the CME and included all three time points from both parents using left amygdala volume into the stepwise regression models. We found that maternal TADS scores from 13 to 18 years of age associated positively with infant left amygdala volumes (p = .008). Correspondingly, paternal TADS scores from 0 to 6 years of age associated positively with the infant left amygdala volumes (p = .014). Conclusions: Our link the infant offspring amygdala volume with parental CME with some agreement with prior findings, and they also imply links paternal CME to infant amygdala volumes. Amygdala is one of the key brain structures associated with both early life exposures and later psychiatric health, which makes it crucially important to elucidate both the underlying mechanisms and the later relevance of these associations in future studies.

Toward a multi-level approach to the study of the intergenerational transmission of trauma: Current findings and future directions

“…In a study of infants in the first two years of life, Khoury et al (2021) reported that infants of mothers with a childhood history of maltreatment had lower gray matter volume and lower amygdala volume. Similar (but not identical) findings were reported in a Finnish cohort by Tuulari et al (2023) using similar methods. Specifically, maternal childhood maltreatment was associated with infants' greater left (but not right) amygdala volume.…”

Exposure to childhood maltreatment is associated with changes in sperm small non-coding RNA and DNA methylation profiles

“…Prior studies and the current study identified sperm epigenetic features that could potentially have effects on offspring brain development, which ties in with our recent neuroimaging studies that link paternal CME with offspring neonate brain structure (H. Karlsson et al, 2020;Tuulari, Kataja, Karlsson, & Karlsson, 2022;Tuulari et al, 2023). Several studies, including from our group, have identified that lifestyle factors remodel DNA methylation near genes controlling the development of the brain in human sperm (Donkin et al, 2016;Ingerslev et al, 2018), supporting that genomic regions involved in brain development are hotspots of epigenetic variation in response to environmental stress.…”

Advances in fetal and neonatal neuroimaging and everyday exposures

“…In a small FinnBrain study (n = 72), paternal early life stress was associated with increased FA values in the body of the corpus callosum, right superior corona radiata, and parts of the internal capsule, 103 even when controlling for confounders including maternal early life stress, maternal SES, or prenatal depression. A recent preprint 104 reported positive associations between maternal (but not paternal) childhood maltreatment and infant left amygdala volume. In an exploratory analysis, the timing of exposure was considered, with increased left amygdala volume observed in infants whose mothers experienced childhood maltreatment between ages 13 and 18, and in those whose fathers experienced this between ages 0 and 6.…”