Child abuse, neural structure, and adolescent psychopathology: a longitudinal study
Open accessAbstract
Objective Child abuse exerts a deleterious impact on a broad array of mental health outcomes. However, the neurobiological mechanisms that mediate this association remain poorly characterized. Here, we use a longitudinal design to prospectively identify neural mediators of the association between child abuse and psychiatric disorders in a community sample of adolescents.Method Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and assessments of mental health were acquired for 51 adolescents (aged 13-20; M=16.96; SD=1.51), 19 of whom were exposed to physical or sexual abuse. Participants were assessed for abuse exposure (time 1), participated in MRI scanning and a diagnostic structured interview (time 2), and 2 years later were followed-up to assess psychopathology (time 3). We examined associations between child abuse and neural structure, and identified whether abuse-related differences in neural structure prospectively predicted psychiatric symptoms.Results Abuse was associated with reduced cortical thickness in medial and lateral prefrontal and temporal lobe regions. Thickness of the left and right parahippocampal gyrus predicted antisocial behavior symptoms, and thickness of the middle temporal gyrus predicted symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. Thickness of the left parahippocampal gyrus mediated the longitudinal association of abuse with antisocial behavior.Conclusion Child abuse is associated with widespread disruptions in cortical structure, and these disruptions are selectively associated with increased vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. Identifying predictive biomarkers of vulnerability following childhood maltreatment may uncover neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking environmental experience with the onset of psychopathology.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Such plastic reorganization may be initially protective under abusive conditions, but may underlie later behavioral problems in the same areas and be selectively associated with increased vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.
“Such plastic reorganization may be initially protective under abusive conditions, but may underlie later behavioral problems in the same areas (e.g., sexual dysfunction) and be selectively associated with increased vulnerability to internalizing and externalizing psychopathology (434).”
From Developmental Trajectories of Early Life Stress and Trauma: A Narrative Review on Neurobiological Aspects Beyond Stress System Dysregulation (2019) · cites this paper as [434]
Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 2 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredNeuroimaging studies have linked CM to heightened emotional reactivity, amygdala responses to negative emotional stimuli, disengagement from regulatory processes via atypical prefrontal-amygdala circuitry, and antisocial behaviors associated with cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus.
“Although the pathways are not altogether clear, neuroimaging studies have linked CM to heightened emotional reactivity, amygdala responses to negative emotional stimuli, disengagement from regulatory processes via atypical prefrontal-amygdala circuitry, and antisocial behaviors associated with cortical thickness in the left parahippocampal gyrus (e.g., Busso et al. 2017, Gee et al. 2013, Peverill”
From Child Sexual Abuse as a Unique Risk Factor for the Development of Psychopathology: The Compounded Convergence of Mechanisms (2021) · cites this paper as Busso et al. 2017
Split into 2 atoms — 1 confirmed, 1 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 0 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 68 · Cited by 164
- Authors
- Busso, D. S., McLaughlin, K. A., Brueck, S., Peverill, M., Gold, A. L., & Sheridan, M. A.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Boston College (US)
- National Institute of Mental Health (US)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Venue
- Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-04
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 321-328.e1
- ISSN
- 0890-8567 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5367472
- OpenAlex
- W2585481528
- Cited by
- 164
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 46 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 23.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) (submittedVersion)
- UNC Libraries
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (7r03da037405-02)
- National Institute of Mental Health (K01MH092555, K01MH092526, R01MH103291)
- National Institute on Drug Abuse (R03-DA037405)
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U54HD083091)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- child abuse, adolescent psychopathology, cortical thickness, antisocial behavior, generalized anxiety disorder, parahippocampal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, prefrontal cortex, temporal lobe, internalizing disorders, externalizing disorders, brain development, predictive biomarkers
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Anxiety Disorders, Cerebral Cortex, Child Abuse, Female, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Social Behavior Disorders, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
