Extensive microstructural changes in association and commissural fibers in adults with childhood maltreatment: An automated fiber quantification study

Background

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a pervasive global issue with heightened risk of both emotion dysregulation and reward dependence related behavioral problems and significantly affects microstructure of brain white matter (WM). Yet the specific alterations of WM microstructure alterations in CM individuals remain unclear.

Methods

We explored fine-grained WM microstructure alterations using automatic fiber quantification and assessed their correlation with emotion dysregulation and reward dependence. Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) scores were collected from 1000 subjects. From these, 21 subjects with CTQ-SF ≥ 38 were selected as the CM group, and 22 subjects with 25 ≤ CTQ-SF ≤ 37 and scores of all subscales not exceeding the thresholds as the no CM group. Support vector regression models were utilized to explore the relationship between the fine-grained diffusion tensor images parameters and emotion dysregulation or reward dependence.

Results

The CM group exhibited alterations in the nodes of several association and commissural fibers, including uncinate, arcuate, inferior fronto-occipital, callosal forceps minor, and inferior longitudinal fasciculus. Remarkably, radial diffusivity in frontoparietal segment of left arcuate fasciculus were significant negatively correlated with reward dependence in the CM group. Mean diffusivity of left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and CM subtypes experiences could be used as predictors for emotion dysregulation.

Limitations

This cross-sectional study did not allow the establishment of a causal relationship unequivocally.

Conclusions

Understanding the neurobiological alterations associated with childhood maltreatment provides a clue for potentially increasing the urgency of early screening for risk of behavioral problems related to emotion dysregulation and reward dependence.