Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Boys Town, NE 68010, USA.
College of Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE 68198, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2022 Nov 9;32(22):5206-5215. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac008.
Working memory, the ability to hold items in memory stores for further manipulation, is a higher order cognitive process that supports many aspects of daily life. Childhood trauma has been associated with altered cognitive development including particular deficits in verbal working memory (VWM), but the neural underpinnings remain poorly understood. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies of VWM have reliably shown decreased alpha activity in left-lateralized language regions during encoding, and increased alpha activity in parieto-occipital cortices during the maintenance phase. In this study, we examined whether childhood trauma affects behavioral performance and the oscillatory dynamics serving VWM using MEG in a cohort of 9- to 15-year-old youth. All participants completed a modified version of the UCLA Trauma History Profile and then performed a VWM task during MEG. Our findings indicated a sex-by-age-by-trauma three-way interaction, whereby younger females experiencing higher levels of trauma had the lowest d' accuracy scores and the strongest positive correlations with age (i.e. older performed better). Likewise, females with higher levels of childhood trauma exhibited altered age-related alpha changes during the maintenance phase within the right temporal and parietal cortices. These findings suggest that trauma exposure may alter the developmental trajectory of neural oscillations serving VWM processing in a sex-specific way.
工作记忆是一种高级认知过程，能够在记忆存储中保持项目以进行进一步操作，支持日常生活的许多方面。儿童期创伤与认知发展改变有关，包括言语工作记忆（VWM）特别缺陷，但神经基础仍知之甚少。VWM 的脑磁图（MEG）研究可靠地表明，在编码期间，左侧语言区域的α活动减少，在维持阶段，顶枕叶皮质的α活动增加。在这项研究中，我们使用 MEG 检查了儿童期创伤是否会影响行为表现和 VWM 的振荡动力学，该研究涉及一组 9 至 15 岁的青少年。所有参与者都完成了加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校创伤史概况的修改版，然后在 MEG 期间进行了 VWM 任务。我们的研究结果表明，存在性别-年龄-创伤三向相互作用，即经历更高水平创伤的年轻女性的 d'准确性评分最低，与年龄的正相关性最强（即年龄越大表现越好）。同样，童年创伤水平较高的女性在维持阶段，右颞叶和顶叶皮质内的α变化与年龄相关。这些发现表明，创伤暴露可能会以性别特异性的方式改变 VWM 处理的神经振荡的发育轨迹。
