ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Childhood maltreatment is associated with altered fear circuitry and increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 230 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
230 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Adverse childhood experiences and resting state functional connectivity of the triple brain network: a meta-analysis.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Electroencephalogram activity related to psychopathological and neuropsychological symptoms in institutionalised minors: a systematic review.Acta neuropsychiatrica · 2025Pooled it
- Oxytocinergic Modulation of Stress-Associated Amygdala-Hippocampus Pathways in Humans Is Mediated by Serotonergic Mechanisms.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Early-life and pubertal stress differentially modulate grey matter development in human adolescents.Scientific reports · 2018Trial
- Amygdala-Hippocampal Connectivity Changes During Acute Psychosocial Stress: Joint Effect of Early Life Stress and Oxytocin.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2015Trial
- Opposing sensitive period effects of early and late childhood maltreatment on corticolimbic responses in fear conditioning.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- The neuropsychological impact of early childhood trauma on cognitive development: A narrative review of mechanisms, outcomes, and interventions.PCN reports : psychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2026Review
- The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Neuropsychological Disorders and Its Intergenerational Transmission Mechanisms.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Neurodevelopmental effects of early life stress: PFC and cognition.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
- Disentangling the developmental cascades between adolescent maltreatment and internalizing and externalizing problems: From between-person differences to within-person changes.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2026Article
- Posttraumatic stress in young children at risk for maltreatment: a causal data science analysis.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Early life stress alters microglia in ventral hippocampus and dorsal CA2 associated with anxiety-like behavior in adolescent male rats.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- The neurobiological effects of childhood maltreatment on brain structure, function, and attachment.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Review
- Interpersonal violence moderates sustained-transient threat co-activation in the vmPFC and amygdala in a community sample of youth.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Impacts of early life adversity on the neurocircuitry of emotional memory in children.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Neural effect of childhood maltreatment on neurovascular coupling in adolescent depression.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Article
- Adverse childhood experiences and their differential relationships with transdiagnostic mental health outcomes in young adults.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Social pain is associated with altered developmental trajectories of connectivity among the triple network model of psychopathology.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Functional brain changes related to adverse childhood experiences and the presence of psychopathology.Discover mental health · 2025Article
- Alterations in cerebral resting state functional connectivity associated with social anxiety disorder and early life adversities.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
170 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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7 authors.
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Abstract
Maltreatment during childhood is a major risk factor for anxiety and depression, which are major public health problems. However, the underlying brain mechanism linking maltreatment and internalizing disorders remains poorly understood. Maltreatment may alter the activation of fear circuitry, but little is known about its impact on the connectivity of this circuitry in adolescence and whether such brain changes actually lead to internalizing symptoms. We examined the associations between experiences of maltreatment during childhood, resting-state functional brain connectivity (rs-FC) of the amygdala and hippocampus, and internalizing symptoms in 64 adolescents participating in a longitudinal community study. Childhood experiences of maltreatment were associated with lower hippocampus-subgenual cingulate rs-FC in both adolescent females and males and lower amygdala-subgenual cingulate rs-FC in females only. Furthermore, rs-FC mediated the association of maltreatment during childhood with adolescent internalizing symptoms. Thus, maltreatment in childhood, even at the lower severity levels found in a community sample, may alter the regulatory capacity of the brain's fear circuit, leading to increased internalizing symptoms by late adolescence. These findings highlight the importance of fronto-hippocampal connectivity for both sexes in internalizing symptoms following maltreatment in childhood. Furthermore, the impact of maltreatment during childhood on both fronto-amygdala and -hippocampal connectivity in females may help explain their higher risk for internalizing disorders such as anxiety and depression.
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