Childhood trauma is linked to abnormal static-dynamic brain topology in adolescents with major depressive disorder

Xuemei Li; Yang Huang; Mengqi Liu; Manqi Zhang; Yang Liu; Teng Teng; Xueer Liu; Ying Yu; Yuanliang Jiang; Xuan Ouyang; Ming Xu; Fajin Lv; Yicheng Long; Xinyu Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.ijchp.2023.100401

Childhood trauma is linked to abnormal static-dynamic brain topology in adolescents with major depressive disorder

Int J Clin Health Psychol. 2023 Oct-Dec;23(4):100401. doi: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2023.100401. Epub 2023 Aug 5.

Authors

Xuemei Li¹, Yang Huang², Mengqi Liu², Manqi Zhang³, Yang Liu², Teng Teng¹, Xueer Liu¹, Ying Yu⁴, Yuanliang Jiang¹, Xuan Ouyang³, Ming Xu^{5

6}, Fajin Lv², Yicheng Long³, Xinyu Zhou¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
² Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
³ Department of Psychiatry, and National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China.
⁴ Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
⁵ Brainnetome Center and National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁶ School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Abstract

Childhood trauma is a leading risk factor for adolescents developing major depressive disorder (MDD); however, the underlying neuroimaging mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the association among childhood trauma, MDD and brain dysfunctions by combining static and dynamic brain network models. We recruited 46 first-episode drug-naïve adolescent MDD patients with childhood trauma (MDD-CT), 53 MDD patients without childhood trauma (MDD-nCT), and 90 healthy controls (HCs) for resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans; all participants were aged 13-18 years. Compared to the HCs and MDD-nCT groups, the MDD-CT group exhibited significantly higher global and local efficiency in static brain networks and significantly higher temporal correlation coefficients in dynamic brain network models at the whole-brain level, and altered the local efficiency of default mode network (DMN) and temporal correlation coefficients of DMN, salience (SAN), and attention (ATN) networks at the local perspective. Correlation analysis indicated that altered brain network features and clinical symptoms, childhood trauma, and particularly emotional neglect were highly correlated in adolescents with MDD. This study may provide new evidence for the dysconnectivity hypothesis regarding the associations between childhood trauma and MDD in adolescents from the perspectives of both static and dynamic brain topology.

Keywords: Adolescent; Brain network; Childhood trauma; Functional neuroimaging; Major depressive disorder.