Publication Date
8-1-2017
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology
Keywords
Childhood abuse, Maltreatment, Trauma, fMRI, Inhibition, Cognitive control
Abstract
Background
Although limited, the literature suggests alterations in activation of cognitive control regions in adults and adolescents with a history of childhood abuse. The current study examined whether such alterations are increased in the face of emotionally-distracting as compared to emotionally neutral information, and whether such alterations occur in brain regions that exert cognitive control in a more top-down sustained manner or a more bottom-up transient manner.
Methods
Participants were young adult women (ages 23–30): one group with a history of childhood physical or sexual abuse (N = 15) and one with no trauma exposure (N = 17), as assessed through the Trauma History Questionnaire and a two-stage interview adapted from the National Crime Victims Survey. Participants underwent fMRI scanning while completing hybrid block/event-related versions of a classic color-word and an emotional Stroop paradigm (threat and positive words). This paradigm allowed us to examine both sustained (activation persisting across blocks) and transient (event-specific activation) aspects of cognitive control.
Results
Women with a history of childhood abuse demonstrated decreased recruitment of frontal-parietal regions involved in cognitive control and enhanced recruitment of a ventral attention surveillance network during blocks of both versions of the Stroop task. Additionally, they had less suppression of brain regions involved in self-referential processes for threat blocks, but greater suppression of these regions for positive blocks. Severity of avoidance symptoms was associated with sustained activation in lateral prefrontal regions, whereas hyperarousal/re-experiencing symptoms were associated with sustained activity in temporal regions. No differential effects were observed for transient control.
Conclusions
Results suggest exposure to childhood abuse is associated with blunted recruitment of brain regions supporting task-set maintenance but hypervigilance for task-irrelevant information, regardless of whether distractors are emotionally neutral or emotional. Exposure to childhood abuse is also associated with less suppression of default mode brain regions associated with self-referential processing in the face of irrelevant threat information, but heightened ability to suppress similar processing for irrelevant positive information.
Copyright Date
8-1-2017
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:
Mackiewicz Seghete, K. L., Kaiser, R. H., DePrince, A. P., & Banich, M. T. (2017). General and emotion-specific alterations to cognitive control in women with a history of childhood abuse. NeuroImage Clinical, 16, 151-164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2017.06.030
Rights Holder
Kristen L. Mackiewicz Seghete, Roselinde H. Kaiser, Anne P. DePrince, Marie T. Banich
Provenance
Received from CHORUS
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
14 pgs
File Size
716 KB
Publication Title
NeuroImage: Clinical
Volume
16
First Page
151
Last Page
164
ISSN
2213-1582
Recommended Citation
Mackiewicz Seghete, K. L., Kaiser, R. H., DePrince, A. P., & Banich, M. T. (2017). General and emotion-specific alterations to cognitive control in women with a history of childhood abuse. NeuroImage Clinical, 16, 151-164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2017.06.030
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Child Psychology Commons, Cognitive Psychology Commons, Cognitive Science Commons, Developmental Psychology Commons, Neurosciences Commons