Early wounds, delayed consequences: Brain-behavior modeling reveals neural pathways linking childhood trauma to procrastination

Childhood trauma has enduring effects on emotional and cognitive functioning, yet its impact on procrastination, particularly from a neurodevelopmental perspective, remains poorly understood. To achieve this, we employed resting-state functional MRI in conjunction with standardized behavioral assessments of childhood trauma, trait anxiety, self-control, and procrastination across two datasets (discovery dataset: n = 760; validation dataset: n = 429). By leveraging the advanced predictive analytics—including connectome-based predictive modeling (CPM) and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression—we aimed to elucidate the neural basis linking childhood trauma to procrastination. Our behavioral results revealed that childhood trauma was a significant predictor of elevated procrastination tendencies, with this association mediated by increased trait anxiety and reduced self-control. At the neural level, the predictive modeling using CPM and LASSO regression demonstrated that functional connectivity within and between the frontoparietal network (FPN), salience network (SAN), visual network (VN), and cerebellum significantly predicted childhood trauma. These patterns likely reflect trauma-related disruptions in higher-order cognitive control (e.g., self-control) and increased affective reactivity (e.g., trait anxiety). More importantly, the mediation analyses further confirmed that trait anxiety and self-control jointly mediate the relationship between trauma-related neural network connectivity and procrastination. These findings presented novel evidence that childhood trauma is associated with procrastination via functional alterations in large-scale neural networks implicated in self-control and emotion regulation, providing critical insights into the long-term behavioral consequences of early-life adversity, and informing the development of targeted interventions to reduce procrastination in trauma-exposed individuals.