King's College London, UK.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2010 Oct;22(10):2316-25. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2009.21394.
Severe deprivation in the first few years of life is associated with multiple difficulties in cognition and behavior. However, the brain basis for these difficulties is poorly understood. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies have implicated limbic system structures as dysfunctional, and one functional imaging study in a heterogeneous group of maltreated individuals has confirmed the presence of abnormalities in the basal ganglia. Based on these studies and known dopaminergic abnormalities from studies in experimental animals using social isolation, we used a task of monetary reward anticipation to examine the functional integrity of brain regions previously shown to be implicated in reward processing. Our sample included a group of adolescents (n = 12) who had experienced global deprivation early in their lives in Romania prior to adoption into UK families. In contrast to a nonadopted comparison group (n = 11), the adoptees did not recruit the striatum during reward anticipation despite comparable performance accuracy and latency. These results show, for the first time, an association between early institutional deprivation and brain reward systems in humans and highlight potential neural vulnerabilities resulting from such exposures.
生命早期的严重剥夺与认知和行为方面的多种困难有关。然而，这些困难的大脑基础还没有被很好地理解。结构和功能神经影像学研究表明边缘系统结构功能失调，一项针对不同虐待群体的功能性影像学研究证实了基底神经节的异常。基于这些研究以及来自使用社会隔离的实验动物的已知多巴胺能异常，我们使用金钱奖励预期任务来检查先前被证明与奖励处理相关的大脑区域的功能完整性。我们的样本包括一组青少年（n = 12），他们在被英国家庭收养之前，在罗马尼亚经历了早年的全球贫困。与未被收养的对照组（n = 11）相比，被收养者在奖励预期期间没有招募纹状体，尽管表现准确性和潜伏期相当。这些结果首次表明，早期的机构剥夺与人类的大脑奖励系统之间存在关联，并强调了这种暴露可能导致的潜在神经脆弱性。
