Childhood abuse represents one of the most potent risk factors for the development of psychopathology during childhood, accounting for 30-60% of the risk for onset. While previous studies have separately associated reductions in gray matter volume (GMV) with childhood abuse and internalizing psychopathology (IP), it is unclear whether abuse and IP differ in their structural abnormalities, and which GMV features are related to abuse and IP at the individual level. In a pooled multisite, multi-investigator sample, 246 child and adolescent females between the ages of 8-18 were recruited into studies of interpersonal violence (IPV) and/or IP (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: While adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are known to impart significant risk for negative mental health and cognitive outcomes in youth, translation of ACE scores into clinical intervention is limited by poor specificity in predicting negative outcomes. This work expands on the ACE framework using a data-driven approach to identify 8 different forms of traumatic and adverse childhood experiences (TRACEs) and reveal their differential associations with psychiatric risk and cognition across development.
Objective: Building upon the traditional ACEs model, this study aimed to characterize unique components of commonly co-occurring TRACEs and to examine moderation of longitudinal change in mental health and cognitive development during adolescence.
Objective: Maltreatment is a significant contributor of emotion dysregulation. Self-compassion could be an effective novel emotion regulation strategy for maltreatment. We compare self-compassion and other strategies with and without the context of maltreatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
October 2024
Objective: Parents play a notable role in the development of child psychopathology. In this study, we investigated the role of parent psychopathology and behaviors on child brain-symptom networks to understand the role of intergenerational transmission of psychopathology. Few studies have documented the interaction of child psychopathology, parent psychopathology, and child neuroimaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThough threat-extinction models continue to inform scientific study of traumatic stress, knowledge of learning and extinction as mechanisms linking exposure to psychopathology remains critically limited among youth. This proof-of-concept study advances the study of threat-extinction in youth by determining feasibility of electrodermal stimulation (EDS), vicarious extinction learning via their parent, and social threat learning in pediatric PTSD (pPTSD). Typically developing (TD) and PTSD-diagnosed youth in 45 mother-child dyads completed an extinction learning paradigm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUp to 1 in 3 youth in the United States have a childhood-onset chronic health condition (CHC), which can lead to neurodevelopmental disruptions in cognitive functioning and brain structure. However, the nature and extent of structural neurobiomarkers that may be consistent across a broad spectrum of CHCs are unknown. Thus, the purpose of this study was to identify potential differences in brain structure in youth with and without chronic physical health conditions (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (pPTSD) is more than three times as likely to develop in trauma-exposed female youth than males. Despite the staggering sex differences in the prevalence rates of pPTSD and symptom expression, relatively little is known about the underlying biomarkers of these sex-based variations in pPTSD as compared to typically development.
Methods: The Youth PTSD study recruited 97 youth, ages of 7 and 18, to undergo comprehensive clinical assessments and T1-weighted MRI to evaluate the extent to which sex can explain PTSD-related variations in brain structure.
Objective: Childhood maltreatment is a potent known risk factor for psychopathology, accounting for nearly 30% of the risk for mental illness in adulthood. One mechanism by which maltreatment contributes to psychopathology is through impairments in emotion regulation. However, the impact of childhood maltreatment on adaptive regulation strategies remains unclear, particularly across positive and negative emotions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Previous studies have identified functional brain abnormalities in pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (pPTSD) suggesting altered frontoparietal-subcortical function during emotion processing. However, little is known about how the brain functionally changes over time in recovery versus the persistence of pPTSD.
Methods: This longitudinal study recruited 23 youth with PTSD and 28 typically developing (TD) youth (ages: 8.
Objective: Childhood abuse represents one of the most potent risk factors for developing psychopathology, especially in females. Evidence suggests that exposure to early-life adversity may be related to advanced maturation of emotion processing neural circuits. However, it remains unknown whether abuse is related to early circuit maturation and whether maturation patterns depend on the presence of psychopathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuropsychopharmacology
November 2021
Pediatric post-traumatic stress disorder (pPTSD) is a prevalent and pervasive form of mental illness comprising a disparate constellation of psychiatric symptoms. Emerging evidence suggests that pPTSD may be characterized by alterations in functional networks traversing the brain. Yet, little is known about pathological changes in the structural tracts underlying functional connectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite broad evidence suggesting that adversity-exposed youth experience an impaired ability to recognize emotion in others, the underlying biological mechanisms remains elusive. This study uses a multimethod approach to target the neurological substrates of this phenomenon in a well-phenotyped sample of youth meeting diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twenty-one PTSD-afflicted youth and 23 typically developing (TD) controls completed clinical interview schedules, an emotion recognition task with eye-tracking, and an implicit emotion processing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging )fMRI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeuroimage Clin
September 2020
Background: Previous studies have identified structural brain abnormalities in pediatric PTSD. However, little is known about what structural brain substrates may confer recovery versus persistence of PTSD in the context of the developing brain.
Methods: This naturalistic longitudinal study used T1-weighted MRI to evaluate cortical thickness and surface area in youth with a PTSD diagnosis (n = 28) and typically developing healthy youth (TD; n = 27) at baseline and one-year follow-up.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
February 2019
Background: Prior studies of pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have reported cross-sectional and age-related structural and functional brain abnormalities in networks associated with cognitive, affective, and self-referential processing. However, no reported studies have comprehensively examined longitudinal gray matter development and its intrinsic functional correlates in pediatric PTSD.
Methods: Twenty-seven youths with PTSD and 21 nontraumatized typically developing (TD) youths were assessed at baseline and 1-year follow-up.