University College London.
King's College London.
Dev Psychopathol. 2015 Nov;27(4 Pt 2):1591-609. doi: 10.1017/S0954579415000966.
While maltreatment is known to impact social and emotional functioning, threat processing, and neural structure, the potentially dimorphic influence of sex on these outcomes remains relatively understudied. We investigated sex differences across these domains in a large community sample of children aged 10 to 14 years (n = 122) comprising 62 children with verified maltreatment experience and 60 well-matched nonmaltreated peers. The maltreated group relative to the nonmaltreated comparison group exhibited poorer social and emotional functioning (more peer problems and heightened emotional reactivity). Cognitively, they displayed a pattern of attentional avoidance of threat in a visual dot-probe task. Similar patterns were observed in males and females in these domains. Reduced gray matter volume was found to characterize the maltreated group in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, bilateral middle temporal lobes, and bilateral supramarginal gyrus; sex differences were observed only in the supramarginal gyrus. In addition, a disordinal interaction between maltreatment exposure and sex was found in the postcentral gyrus. Finally, attentional avoidance to threat mediated the relationship between maltreatment and emotional reactivity, and medial orbitofrontal cortex gray matter volume mediated the relationship between maltreatment and peer functioning. Similar mediation patterns were observed across sexes. This study highlights the utility of combining multiple levels of analysis when studying the "latent vulnerability" engendered by childhood maltreatment and yields tentative findings regarding a neural basis of sex differences in long-term outcomes for maltreated children.
虽然虐待行为已知会影响社交和情绪功能、威胁处理和神经结构，但性别对这些结果的潜在二态影响仍相对研究不足。我们在一个由 10 至 14 岁的儿童组成的大型社区样本中（n=122），研究了这些领域的性别差异，其中包括 62 名有虐待经历的儿童和 60 名匹配良好的未受虐待的同龄人。与未受虐待的对照组相比，受虐待组表现出较差的社交和情绪功能（更多的同伴问题和更高的情绪反应性）。认知上，他们在视觉点探测任务中表现出对威胁的注意力回避模式。在这些领域，男性和女性都观察到了类似的模式。研究发现，受虐待组的内侧眶额皮层、双侧颞中回和双侧缘上回灰质体积减少；仅在缘上回观察到性别差异。此外，在中央后回还发现了虐待暴露和性别的离散交互作用。最后，对威胁的注意力回避介导了虐待与情绪反应之间的关系，而内侧眶额皮层的灰质体积则介导了虐待与同伴功能之间的关系。在性别之间观察到了类似的中介模式。这项研究强调了在研究儿童虐待产生的“潜在脆弱性”时，结合多个分析层次的效用，并对受虐待儿童长期结果中性别差异的神经基础得出了初步发现。
