Poster #15 - Altered Brain Activation During Inhibitory Control Under Emotional Load in Adults with Child Maltreatment History

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Integrative Statement

Child maltreatment (CM), one of the most adverse and stressful challenges confronting children, increases the likelihood of psychopathology across the lifespan. According to the organizational model of development, dynamic relations between internal and external contexts shape regulated behavior (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 2002). Adverse rearing environments have been shown to promote neurocognitive adaptations that may lead to dysregulated behavior, including impulsivity, impaired inhibitory control, heightened emotional reactivity, and altered emotion processing (Cowell et al., 2015; Lovallo et al., 2013; Maughan & Cicchetti, 2002; Mueller et al., 2010; Pollak & Tolley-Schell, 2003; Young & Widom, 2014). However, there has been limited research explicitly investigating the interface between inhibitory control and emotion and associated neural underpinnings in the context of CM history. Due to its protracted development (Gogtay et al., 2004) and susceptibility to early life stress (Diorio et al., 1993), we predicted that the prefrontal cortex would show altered activity in adults with CM compared to those without CM during inhibitory control, especially in negatively valenced contexts.
Participants included 88 adults who were part of a longitudinal high-risk, low-income sample, first recruited at 6-12 years of age, and subsequently assessed during adolescence prior to the current adult assessment (M=30 years). Half of the participants had a history of CM and half did not. Preliminary analyses have been completed on 20 participants from the CM group and 20 from the comparison group. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3T during a behavioral paradigm that combined an inhibitory control task (Go/No-go) with emotional images. In this task, letters were presented sequentially in a small box at the center of the screen, while negative, positive, neutral or scrambled images were displayed in the background. Images were selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al., 2008). Participants were instructed to ignore the images and respond as quickly as possible with a button press to every letter (Go trial), except the letter X (No-go trial). Go trials made up 75% of the task such that participants acquired a prepotent tendency to press and needed to actively inhibit responses during No-go trials. The impact of CM on task performance, measured by d’, was examined on positive, neutral and scrambled background conditions; independent-samples t-tests showed no significant effects of CM group.
We also examined CM group differences in whole-brain activation on two contrasts of interest, negative vs. scrambled and positive vs. scrambled, while controlling for age. Compared to the maltreated group, the non-maltreated group showed greater activation on the negative vs. scrambled contrast in the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, and left cerebellum (voxelwise p<.005, cluster threshold p<.05). There were no group differences observed for positive vs. scrambled images. These preliminary results indicate that the CM group recruited regulatory frontal regions less than the comparison group did in the context of negative, but not positive, backgrounds. Follow-up research should further assess the relationship between tendency towards impulsive responding during negative valence context (e.g., negative urgency), history of CM, and the development of psychopathology.

Authors

• Lauren Demers, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Ruskin H. Hunt, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Dante Cicchetti, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julia E. Cohen-Gilbert, McLean Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author

• Fred Rogosch, University of Rochester
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen M. Thomas, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author