Emotional abuse is a widespread, elusive and insidious problem. Psychiatric disorders emerge through the interaction of genetic and experiential factors. Childhood maltreatment is a major experimental risk factor for the later development of mood, anxiety, dissociate, substance abuse, and personality problems. Emotional abuse in particular appears to be among the most prevalent forms of maltreatment, even more pervasive than physical and sexual abuse. Much remains to be discovered about the neurobiologcal consequences of emotional abuse in the absence of other forms of maltreatment. This proposal aims to test the main hypothesis that adults who have been exposed to emotional maltreatment during childhood have abnormalities in brain regions that regulate emotion, aggression and cognition. Vulnerable targets include the corpus callosum, cerebellar vermis, neocortex, and amygdala. Four groups of 30 subjects (15M/15F) will be studied; those with no history of childhood abuse; those with a history of verbal abuse; those who visually witnessed domestic violence; and those who were exposed to verbal abuse and who witnessed domestic violence. Structure and function of the regions of interest will be assessed using morphometric MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, functional MRI (T2 relaxometry) and MR spectroscopy to determine N-acetylaspartate to creatine ratios as an indicator of neuronal density and functioning. We will test the hypotheses that emotional abuse adversely effects the structural development of these regions, and results in functional consequences. Further, we predict that combined exposure to verbal abuse and witnessing domestic violence will have a greater impact than exposure to one or the other alone. Finally, the proposed model predicts that verbal aggression will exert greater effects on left hemisphere structures while visual exposure to domestic violence will exert greater effects on right hemisphere structures.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01MH066222-04
Application #
7070116
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-BDCN-6 (01))
Program Officer
Meinecke, Douglas L
Project Start
2003-06-01
Project End
2008-05-31
Budget Start
2006-06-01
Budget End
2007-05-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$421,932
Indirect Cost
Name
Mc Lean Hospital (Belmont, MA)
Department
Type
DUNS #
046514535
City
Belmont
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02478
Teicher, Martin H; Ohashi, Kyoko; Lowen, Steven B et al. (2015) Mood dysregulation and affective instability in emerging adults with childhood maltreatment: An ecological momentary assessment study. J Psychiatr Res 70:1-8
Polcari, Ann; Rabi, Keren; Bolger, Elizabeth et al. (2014) Parental verbal affection and verbal aggression in childhood differentially influence psychiatric symptoms and wellbeing in young adulthood. Child Abuse Negl 38:91-102
Teicher, Martin H; Anderson, Carl M; Ohashi, Kyoko et al. (2014) Childhood maltreatment: altered network centrality of cingulate, precuneus, temporal pole and insula. Biol Psychiatry 76:297-305
Teicher, Martin H; Samson, Jacqueline A (2013) Childhood maltreatment and psychopathology: A case for ecophenotypic variants as clinically and neurobiologically distinct subtypes. Am J Psychiatry 170:1114-33
Tomoda, Akemi; Polcari, Ann; Anderson, Carl M et al. (2012) Reduced visual cortex gray matter volume and thickness in young adults who witnessed domestic violence during childhood. PLoS One 7:e52528
Teicher, Martin H; Anderson, Carl M; Polcari, Ann (2012) Childhood maltreatment is associated with reduced volume in the hippocampal subfields CA3, dentate gyrus, and subiculum. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109:E563-72
Choi, Jeewook; Jeong, Bumseok; Polcari, Ann et al. (2012) Reduced fractional anisotropy in the visual limbic pathway of young adults witnessing domestic violence in childhood. Neuroimage 59:1071-9
Teicher, Martin H; Vitaliano, Gordana D (2011) Witnessing violence toward siblings: an understudied but potent form of early adversity. PLoS One 6:e28852
Tomoda, Akemi; Sheu, Yi-Shin; Rabi, Keren et al. (2011) Exposure to parental verbal abuse is associated with increased gray matter volume in superior temporal gyrus. Neuroimage 54 Suppl 1:S280-6
Teicher, Martin H; Samson, Jacqueline A; Sheu, Yi-Shin et al. (2010) Hurtful words: association of exposure to peer verbal abuse with elevated psychiatric symptom scores and corpus callosum abnormalities. Am J Psychiatry 167:1464-71

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