Abnormalities of white matter integrity in the corpus callosum of adolescents with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse: a DTI study

This study seeks to determine whether white matter integrity in the brain differs between adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and matched healthy adolescents and whether there is a relationship between white matter integrity and symptom severity in the patient group. Using 3T diffusion tensor imaging, we examined fractional anisotropy (FA) in a group of adolescents with CSA-related PTSD (n = 20) and matched healthy controls (n = 20), in a region of interest consisting of the bilateral uncinate fasciculus (UF), the genu, splenium and body of the corpus callosum (CC), and the bilateral cingulum. In addition, we performed an exploratory whole brain analysis. Trauma symptomatology was measured with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) to enable correlational analyses between FA differences and trauma symptomatology. The PTSD group had significantly lower FA values in the genu, midbody and splenium of the CC in comparison with controls (p Multivariate analysis of psychological dat

Conceptual Analysis: A Social Neuroscience Approach to Interpersonal Interaction in the Context of Disruption and Disorganization of Attachment (NAMDA)

Humans are strongly dependent upon social resources for allostasis and emotion regulation. This applies especially to early childhood because humans – as an altricial species – have a prolonged period of dependency on support and input from caregivers who typically act as sources of co-regulation. Accordingly, attachment theory proposes that the history and quality of early interactions with primary caregivers shape children’s internal working models of attachment. In turn, these attachment models guide behavior, initially with the set goal of maintaining proximity to caregivers, but eventually paving the way to more generalized mental representations of self and others. Mounting evidence in nonclinical populations suggests that these mental representations coincide with differential patterns of neural structure, function, and connectivity in a range of brain regions previously associated with emotional and cognitive capacities. What is currently lacking, however, is an evidence-based account of how early adverse attachment-related experiences and/or the emergence of attachment disorganization impact the developing brain. While work on early childhood adversities offers important insights, we propose that how these events become biologically embedded crucially hinges on the context of the child-caregiver attachment relationships in which the events take place. Our selective review distinguishes between direct social neuroscience research on disorganized attachment and indirect maltreatment-related research, converging on aberrant functioning in neurobiological systems subserving aversion, approach, emotion regulation, and mental state processing in the wake of severe attachment disruption. To account for heterogeneity of findings, we propose two distinct neurobiological phenotypes characterized by hyper- and hypo-arousal primarily deriving from the caregiver serving either as a threatening or as an insufficient source of co-regulation, respectively

Electrophysiological assessment methodology of sensory processing dysfunction in schizophrenia and dementia of the Alzheimer type

Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease impacts on various sensory processings are extensively reviewed in the present publication. This article describes aspects of a research project whose aim is to delineate the neurobiology that may underlie Social Withdrawal in Alzheimer’s disease, Schizophrenia and Major Depression. This is a European-funded IMI 2 project, identified as PRISM (Psychiatric Ratings using Intermediate Stratified Markers). This paper focuses specifically on the selected electrophysiological paradigms chosen based on a comprehensive review of all relevant literature and practical constraints. The choice of the electrophysiological biomarkers were fundamentality based their metrics and capacity to discriminate between populations. The selected electrophysiological paradigms are resting state EEG, auditory mismatch negativity, auditory and visual based oddball paradigms, facial emotion processing ERP’s and auditory steady-state response. The primary objective is to study the effect of social withdrawal on various biomarkers and endophenotypes found altered in the target populations. This has never been studied in relationship to social withdrawal, an important component of CNS diseases

The Central Autonomic Network and Regulation of Bladder Function

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is involved in the regulation of physiologic and homeostatic parameters relating particularly to the visceral organs and the co-ordination of physiological responses to threat. Blood pressure and heart rate, respiration, pupillomotor reactivity, sexual function, gastrointestinal secretions and motility, and urine storage and micturition are all under a degree of ANS control. Furthermore, there is close integration between the ANS and other neural functions such as emotion and cognition, and thus brain regions that are known to be important for autonomic control are also implicated in emotional functions. In this review we explore the role of the central ANS in the control of the bladder, and the implications of this for bladder dysfunction in diseases of the ANS

Childhood sexual abuse and its effect on adolescent brain structure

In this thesis a literature review was conducted to map the results of  earlier neuroimaging studies in minors who experienced childhood psychological trauma. Next, three different structural neuroimaging techniques were employed to study the effects of childhood sexual trauma in youth .Main findings:1. Neuroimaging studies in traumatised children and adolescents are scarce and heterogeneous in design, in particular with regard to the sample studied and type of trauma.2. The results of structural neuroimaging studies in traumatised minors differ from those in adult populations, in particular with regard to findings on hippocampus and corpus callosum (CC).3. Paralleling the inconsistent findings on hippocampal volume reduction in traumatised minors, our VBM-study did not show differences between groups for hippocampal volume.4. VBM showed smaller volumes of key regions of the limbic system (ACC, amygdala) in the CSA-related PTSD group compared to controls.5. Adolescents with sexual abuse-related PTSD show no abnormalities in cortical thickness, in line with findings in adults.  6. Adolescents with CSA-related PTSD show less integrity of parts of the CC compared to healthy non-traumatised controls.7. Our structural neuroimaging studies showed limited associations with trauma symptomatology, in line with findings in studies in minors.The EPISCA project is funded by a grant from the LUMC. M.J. van Hoof was supported by WOP GGZ Rivierduinen, which also made assistance in patient recruitment, data collection and data management by C.I. Gelderblom possible. S.A. Rombouts was also supported through the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research: NWO Vici project (grant number 016130677). The authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support given by the participating centers.LUMC / Geneeskund

Neuroimaging in children, adolescents and young adults with psychological trauma

Childhood psychological trauma is a strong predictor of psychopathology. Preclinical research points to the influence of this type of trauma on brain development. However, the effects of psychological trauma on the developing human brain are less known and a challenging question is whether the effects can be reversed or even prevented. The aim of this review is to give an overview of neuroimaging studies in traumatized juveniles and young adults up till 2012. Neuroimaging studies in children and adolescents with traumatic experiences were found to be scarce. Most studies were performed by a small number of research groups in the United States and examined structural abnormalities. The reduction in hippocampal volume reported in adults with PTSD could not be confirmed in juveniles. The most consistent finding in children and adolescents, who experienced psychological trauma are structural abnormalities of the corpus callosum. We could not identify any studies investigating treatment effects. Neuroimaging studies in traumatized children and adolescents clearly lag behind studies in traumatized adults as well as studies on ADHD and autism. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

Preserved cortical thickness, surface area and volume in adolescents with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse

Exposure to childhood adverse events is associated with severe consequences for general health and structural and functional changes in the brain of its survivors. In order to unravel and in the end influence the pathway linking adversity and pathology, neuroimaging research is crucial. Up till now studies in minors are scarce and differ in type of adversity or methodology. Almost all studies report lower cortical thickness, but in a broad variety of regions. In this study we investigated cortical thickness measures and clinical data in a well circumscribed group of adolescents with PTSD related to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) (N = 21) and a healthy non-traumatised control group (N = 21). The ventromedial PFC (vmPFC), ACC, insula, and middle/superior temporal gyrus were chosen as ROI's due to their respective roles in emotion and information processing. No significant effect of group was found for cortical thickness, surface area or volume in any of the ROIs. This is in line with the results of research in adult women with sexual abuse related PTSD, suggesting that this may be specific to this group, independent of age. Recent research points to differential biological and pathological consequences of different types of childhood adversity

Emotional face processing in adolescents with childhood abuse-related posttraumatic stress disorder, internalizing disorders and healthy controls. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 264, 52-59

Childhood Sexual Abuse related posttraumatic stress disorder (CSA-related PTSD), and anxiety and depressive disorders (clinical depression) have profound though differential impact on adolescent emotion regulation, attention bias and emotional face processing. We hypothesized increased negative attention bias for emotional faces and altered brain functioning in CSA-related PTSD compared to internalizing disorders and healthy controls in a cross-sectional fMRI study using an emotional face processing task in 19 12-20-year-old adolescents with CSA-related PTSD, 26 with internalizing disorders and 26 healthy controls.Outcome measures were reaction times, subjective ratings of emotional faces, and brain activation patterns for whole brain and for regions of interest. Compared to both other groups adolescents with CSA-related PTSD showed significantly slower reaction times and the highest subjective rating of emotional faces. On whole brain and ROI level, no significant group differences were found. Self-reported depressive, posttraumatic or dissociative symptoms were not associated with differences in task-related brain activity. Results support the hypothesis of increased negative attention bias for fearful and neutral faces in CSA-related PTSD versus both other groups. The absence of neural differences might indicate a brain-behavior neuro-imaging gap to be closed by larger and IQ matched samples or more sensitive paradigms to elicit emotion processing.</p

Relationship of trauma symptoms to amygdala-based functional brain changed in adolescents

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