ArticleEuropean psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists2023
Structural brain correlates of childhood trauma with replication across two large, independent community-based samples.
Article in European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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12 citing papers in PubMed.
- History of childhood trauma enhances the detrimental effects of recent stressors on brain structure and function in major depressive disorder.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- Exposome-wide patterns predict brain health in aging.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Impact of adverse life experiences on pain, depression, anxiety, and comorbidities: a youth longitudinal sample.Pain reports · 2026Article
- Identifying genome-by-childhood trauma interactions for depression using a forest-based approach in the UK Biobank and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Genetic Evidence Supporting a Role for Brain Region Volume and Functional Network Alterations in Major Depression.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Hippocampal, thalamic, and amygdala subfield morphology in major depressive disorder: an ultra-high resolution MRI study at 7-Tesla.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Article
- Exploring the association between childhood trauma and limbic system subregion volumes in healthy individuals: a neuroimaging study.BMC psychiatry · 2024Article
- Altered dynamic functional connectivity of nucleus accumbens subregions in major depressive disorder: the interactive effect of childhood trauma and diagnosis.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Frontal cortical volume deficits as enduring evidence of childhood abuse in community adults with AUD and HIV infection comorbidity.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- Role of stress and early-life stress in the pathogeny of inflammatory bowel disease.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
- Classification accuracy of structural and functional connectomes across different depressive phenotypes.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Abnormal dynamic functional connectivity of thalamic subregions in patients with first-episode, drug-naïve major depressive disorder.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
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20 authors.
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Abstract
introductionChildhood trauma and adversity are common across societies and have strong associations with physical and psychiatric morbidity throughout the life-course. One possible mechanism through which childhood trauma may predispose individuals to poor psychiatric outcomes is via associations with brain structure. This study aimed to elucidate the associations between childhood trauma and brain structure across two large, independent community cohorts.
methodsThe two samples comprised (i) a subsample of Generation Scotland (n=1,024); and (ii) individuals from UK Biobank (n=27,202). This comprised n=28,226 for mega-analysis. MRI scans were processed using Free Surfer, providing cortical, subcortical, and global brain metrics. Regression models were used to determine associations between childhood trauma measures and brain metrics and psychiatric phenotypes.
resultsChildhood trauma associated with lifetime depression across cohorts (OR 1.06 GS, 1.23 UKB), and related to early onset and recurrent course within both samples. There was evidence for associations between childhood trauma and structural brain metrics. This included reduced global brain volume, and reduced cortical surface area with highest effects in the frontal (β=-0.0385, SE=0.0048, p(FDR)=5.43x10-15) and parietal lobes (β=-0.0387, SE=0.005, p(FDR)=1.56x10-14). At a regional level the ventral diencephalon (VDc) displayed significant associations with childhood trauma measures across both cohorts and at mega-analysis (β=-0.0232, SE=0.0039, p(FDR)=2.91x10-8). There were also associations with reduced hippocampus, thalamus, and nucleus accumbens volumes. DISCUSSION: Associations between childhood trauma and reduced global and regional brain volumes were found, across two independent UK cohorts, and at mega-analysis. This provides robust evidence for a lasting effect of childhood adversity on brain structure.
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