[Cohort studies in child and adolescent psychiatry]. / Kohortenstudien in der Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie.

BACKGROUND: Longitudinal cohort studies with early start and life span perspectives are increasingly recognized as being crucial to uncover developmental trajectories as well as risk and resilience factors of psychiatric disorders. OBJECTIVE: The importance of longitudinal studies is presented and the main findings of the Mannheim study of children at risk (MARS), the adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD), the pediatric and adolescent health survey (Kinder- und Jugendgesundheitssurvey, KiGGS) and the AIMS longitudinal European autism project (LEAP) cohort studies are described. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A literature search was carried out in MEDLINE. RESULTS: The MARS followed participants with psychosocial and organic risks over more than 30 years starting from birth and showed the importance of early risk factors (prenatal period up to early childhood) for neuropsychosocial development. The ABCD cohort study (start 9-10 years old) underlined the developmental significance of early socioemotional and prenatal risks as well as toxin exposure. The KiGGS cohort followed children and adolescents from age 0-17 years up to the ages of 10-28 years. Main findings underline the importance of the socioeconomic status and gender-specific effects with respect to sensitive periods for the onset and trajectories of psychiatric disorders. The AIMS cohort followed patients with and without autism spectrum disorders aged between 6 and 30 years and first results revealed small effects regarding group differences. Further, cohort studies starting prenatally along with deep phenotyping are warranted to uncover the complex etiology of mental disorders. CONCLUSION: Existing cohort studies on early mental development have shown specific focal points. To identify general and specific risk and resilience factors for psychiatric disorders and to model trajectories, there is a need for multimodal integration of data sets.

Impact of early life adversities on human brain functioning: A coordinate-based meta-analysis.

The detrimental impact of early life adversities (ELAs; entailing pre- and postnatal experiences) on the developing brain has been well established. By inducing neural alterations underlying critical human socio-cognitive functions, ELAs may embed latent vulnerability to psychopathologies. However, single neuroimaging studies report conflicting results. Therefore, this coordinate-based meta-analysis aims to identify convergent functional alterations following ELAs. Electronic databases were searched for relevant articles (2001 to June 2019), retrieving 68 eligible studies containing 3685 unique participants. The activation likelihood estimation algorithm was used for analyses according to best-practice guidelines. Whereas pooled analyses did not yield any findings, further homogenizing the experiments revealed significant functional alterations in the left superior frontal gyrus in healthy subjects, left centromedial amygdala during emotion processing, left precuneus during memory processing and left centromedial amygdala and putamen when analyzing the impact of postnatal experiences. These results support the current consensus in the field of environmental imaging: ELAs might exert their effects through systematically altering critical neurocognitive systems and enhance one's vulnerability to future mental health problems.