Opposing relationships of childhood threat and deprivation with stria terminalis white matter.

While stress may be a potential mechanism by which childhood threat and deprivation influence mental health, few studies have considered specific stress-related white matter pathways, such as the stria terminalis (ST) and medial forebrain bundle (MFB). Our goal was to examine the relationships between childhood adversity and ST and MFB structural integrity and whether these pathways may provide a link between childhood adversity and affective symptoms and disorders. Participants were young adults (n = 100) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and affective symptom severity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood abuse and repeated traumatic events. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education). Participants underwent diffusion spectrum imaging. Human Connectome Project data was used to perform ST and MFB tractography; these tracts were used as ROIs to extract generalized fractional anisotropy (gFA) from each participant. Childhood threat was associated with ST gFA, such that greater threat was associated with less ST gFA. SED was also associated with ST gFA, however, conversely to threat, greater SED was associated with greater ST gFA. Additionally, threat was negatively associated with MFB gFA, and MFB gFA was negatively associated with post-traumatic stress symptoms. Our results suggest that childhood threat and deprivation have opposing influences on ST structural integrity, providing new evidence that the context of childhood adversity may have an important influence on its neurobiological effects, even on the same structure. Further, the MFB may provide a novel link between childhood threat and affective symptoms.

Interactions between childhood maltreatment and combat exposure trauma on stress-related activity within the cingulate cortex: a pilot study.

Childhood trauma may sensitize the brain, increasing vulnerability to maladaptive stress responses following adulthood trauma exposure. Previous work has identified the cingulum as a white matter pathway that may be sensitized to adulthood trauma by childhood maltreatment. In this pilot study of young adult male military veterans (N = 28), we examined a priori regions of interest (ROIs) connected by the cingulum, including regions involved in cognitive processes and stress responses. Our goal was to examine the interaction between childhood maltreatment and combat exposure on stress-related activity within cingulum-associated ROIs. As such we utilized a mild cognitive stress task, a performance-titrated multi-source interference task (MSIT). We found that childhood maltreatment moderated the effect of combat exposure on stress-related, interference-evoked activity within the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC, activation), subgenual ACC (sgACC, deactivation) and posterior midcingulate cortex (pMCC, deactivation). Greater combat exposure was associated with greater interference-evoked activation within the dACC, and less sgACC and pMCC deactivation among individuals with more severe childhood maltreatment. Our findings suggest that child maltreatment sensitizes these anterior and mid-cingulate regions to later life trauma. These findings may have implications for cognitive control, autonomic regulation/stress reactivity, and responses to noxious/aversive stimuli, which may contribute to increased psychiatric vulnerability.

A pilot time-in-bed restriction intervention behaviorally enhances slow-wave activity in older adults.

Introduction: Identifying intervention methods that target sleep characteristics involved in memory processing is a priority for the field of cognitive aging. Older adults with greater sleep efficiency and non-rapid eye movement slow-wave activity (SWA) (0.5-4 Hz electroencephalographic activity) tend to exhibit better memory and cognitive abilities. Paradoxically, long total sleep times are consistently associated with poorer cognition in older adults. Thus, maximizing sleep efficiency and SWA may be a priority relative to increasing mere total sleep time. As clinical behavioral sleep treatments do not consistently enhance SWA, and propensity for SWA increases with time spent awake, we examined with a proof-of concept pilot intervention whether a greater dose of time-in-bed (TiB) restriction (75% of habitual TiB) would increase both sleep efficiency and SWA in older adults with difficulties staying asleep without impairing memory performance. Methods: Participants were adults ages 55-80 with diary-reported sleep efficiency <90% and wake after sleep onset (WASO) >20 min. Sleep diary, actigraphy, polysomnography (PSG), and paired associate memory acquisition and retention were assessed before and after a week-long TiB restriction intervention (n = 30). TiB was restricted to 75% of diary-reported habitual TiB. A comparison group of n = 5 participants repeated assessments while following their usual sleep schedule to obtain preliminary estimates of effect sizes associated with repeated testing. Results: Subjective and objective sleep measures robustly improved in the TiB restriction group for sleep quality, sleep depth, sleep efficiency and WASO, at the expense of TiB and time spent in N1 and N2 sleep. As hypothesized, SWA increased robustly with TiB restriction across the 0.5-4 Hz range, as well as subjective sleep depth, subjective and objective WASO. Despite increases in sleepiness ratings, no impairments were found in memory acquisition or retention. Conclusion: A TiB restriction dose equivalent to 75% of habitual TiB robustly increased sleep continuity and SWA in older adults with sleep maintenance difficulties, without impairing memory performance. These findings may inform long-term behavioral SWA enhancement interventions aimed at improving memory performance and risk for cognitive impairments.

Childhood Threat Is Associated With Lower Resting-State Connectivity Within a Central Visceral Network.

Childhood adversity is associated with altered or dysregulated stress reactivity; these altered patterns of physiological functioning persist into adulthood. Evidence from both preclinical animal models and human neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experience differentially influences stressor-evoked activity within central visceral neural circuits proximally involved in the control of stress responses, including the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus (PVN), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and amygdala. However, the relationship between childhood adversity and the resting-state connectivity of this central visceral network remains unclear. To this end, we examined relationships between childhood threat and childhood socioeconomic deprivation, the resting-state connectivity between our regions of interest (ROIs), and affective symptom severity and diagnoses. We recruited a transdiagnostic sample of young adult males and females (n = 100; mean age = 27.28, SD = 3.99; 59 females) with a full distribution of maltreatment history and symptom severity across multiple affective disorders. Resting-state data were acquired using a 7.2-min functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) sequence; noted ROIs were applied as masks to determine ROI-to-ROI connectivity. Threat was determined by measures of childhood traumatic events and abuse. Socioeconomic deprivation (SED) was determined by a measure of childhood socioeconomic status (parental education level). Covarying for age, race and sex, greater childhood threat was significantly associated with lower BNST-PVN, amygdala-sgACC and PVN-sgACC connectivity. No significant relationships were found between SED and resting-state connectivity. BNST-PVN connectivity was associated with the number of lifetime affective diagnoses. Exposure to threat during early development may entrain altered patterns of resting-state connectivity between these stress-related ROIs in ways that contribute to dysregulated neural and physiological responses to stress and subsequent affective psychopathology.