Early life stress and trauma and enhanced limbic activation to emotionally valenced faces in depressed and healthy children

Abstract

Objective: Previous studies have examined the relationships between structural brain characteristics and early life stress in adults. However, there is limited evidence for functional brain variation associated with early life stress in children. We hypothesized that early life stress and trauma would be associated with increased functional brain activation response to negative emotional faces in children with and without a history of depression.

Method: Psychiatric diagnosis and life events in children (starting at age 3-5 years) were assessed in a longitudinal study. A follow-up magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study acquired data (N = 115 at ages 7-12, 51% girls) on functional brain response to fearful, sad, and happy faces relative to neutral faces. We used a region-of-interest mask within cortico-limbic areas and conducted regression analyses and repeated-measures analysis of covariance.

Results: Greater activation responses to fearful, sad, and happy faces in the amygdala and its neighboring regions were found in children with greater life stress. Moreover, an association between life stress and left hippocampal and globus pallidus activity depended on children's diagnostic status. Finally, all children with greater life trauma showed greater bilateral amygdala and cingulate activity specific to sad faces but not the other emotional faces, although right amygdala activity was moderated by psychiatric status.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that limbic hyperactivity may be a biomarker of early life stress and trauma in children and may have implications in the risk trajectory for depression and other stress-related disorders. However, this pattern varied based on emotion type and history of psychopathology.

Keywords: child; early life stress; early life trauma; emotion; fMRI.

Figure 1

(A) Brain activity to negative faces (green areas activated by fearful faces; blue areas activated by sad faces) and happy faces (red areas) increased as a function of cumulative stressful life events and scatterplot illustrating interactions between (B) cumulative stressful life events and major depressive disorder (MDD) status and (C) cumulative stressful life events and other psychiatric control (OPC) status. Note: BOLD = blood oxygen level-dependent; R = right side.

Figure 1

(A) Brain activity to negative faces (green areas activated by fearful faces; blue areas activated by sad faces) and happy faces (red areas) increased as a function of cumulative stressful life events and scatterplot illustrating interactions between (B) cumulative stressful life events and major depressive disorder (MDD) status and (C) cumulative stressful life events and other psychiatric control (OPC) status. Note: BOLD = blood oxygen level-dependent; R = right side.

Figure 1

(A) Brain activity to negative faces (green areas activated by fearful faces; blue areas activated by sad faces) and happy faces (red areas) increased as a function of cumulative stressful life events and scatterplot illustrating interactions between (B) cumulative stressful life events and major depressive disorder (MDD) status and (C) cumulative stressful life events and other psychiatric control (OPC) status. Note: BOLD = blood oxygen level-dependent; R = right side.

Figure 2

Brain activity to sad faces predicted by each effect. (A) Voxels predicted by each effect and (B) scatterplot illustrating an interaction between cumulative traumatic life events and other psychiatric control (OPC) status. Note: R = right side.

Figure 2

Brain activity to sad faces predicted by each effect. (A) Voxels predicted by each effect and (B) scatterplot illustrating an interaction between cumulative traumatic life events and other psychiatric control (OPC) status. Note: R = right side.