Adelphi University.
Boston Children's Hospital.
Dev Psychopathol. 2017 Dec;29(5):1865-1876. doi: 10.1017/S0954579417001456.
Early caregiving adversity is associated with increased risk for social difficulties. The ventral striatum and associated corticostriatal circuitry, which have demonstrated vulnerability to early exposures to adversity, are implicated in many aspects of social behavior, including social play, aggression, and valuation of social stimuli across development. Here, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the degree to which early caregiving adversity was associated with altered coritocostriatal resting connectivity in previously institutionalized youth (n = 41) relative to youth who were raised with their biological families from birth (n = 47), and the degree to which this connectivity was associated with parent-reported social problems. Using a seed-based approach, we observed increased positive coupling between the ventral striatum and anterior regions of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in previously institutionalized youth. Stronger ventral striatum-mPFC coupling was associated with parent reports of social problems. A moderated-mediation analysis showed that ventral striatal-mPFC connectivity mediated group differences in social problems, and more so with increasing age. These findings show that early institutional care is associated with differences in resting-state connectivity between the ventral striatum and the mPFC, and this connectivity seems to play an increasingly important role in social behaviors as youth enter adolescence.
早期养育逆境与社交困难风险增加有关。腹侧纹状体及其相关的皮质纹状体回路，容易受到早期逆境暴露的影响，涉及到许多社会行为方面，包括社交游戏、攻击行为和社会刺激的价值评估等。在这里，我们使用静息态功能磁共振成像来评估早期养育逆境与先前被机构化的青年（n=41）相对于从出生就与亲生父母一起长大的青年（n=47）的皮质纹状体静息连接改变的程度，以及这种连接与父母报告的社交问题的关联程度。使用基于种子的方法，我们观察到先前被机构化的青年的腹侧纹状体与内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）前部区域之间的正相关增加。腹侧纹状体与 mPFC 之间更强的耦合与父母报告的社交问题有关。中介调节分析表明，腹侧纹状体与 mPFC 的连接介导了社交问题的组间差异，并且随着年龄的增长，这种连接的作用越来越重要。这些发现表明，早期机构照护与腹侧纹状体和 mPFC 之间的静息状态连接存在差异，并且这种连接在青少年时期的社会行为中似乎发挥着越来越重要的作用。
