Mismatch or allostatic load? Timing of life adversity differentially shapes gray matter volume and anxious temperament.
Traditionally, adversity was defined as the accumulation of environmental events (allostatic load). Recently however, a mismatch between the early and the later (adult) environment (mismatch) has been hypothesized to be critical for disease development, a hypothesis that has not yet been tested explicitly in humans. We explored the impact of timing of life adversity (childhood and past year) on anxiety and depression levels (N = 833) and brain morphology (N = 129). Both remote (childhood) and proximal (recent) adversities were differentially mirrored in morphometric changes in areas critically involved in emotional processing (i.e. amygdala/hippocampus, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, respectively). The effect of adversity on affect acted in an additive way with no evidence for interactions (mismatch). Structural equation modeling demonstrated a direct effect of adversity on morphometric estimates and anxiety/depression without evidence of brain morphology functioning as a mediator. Our results highlight that adversity manifests as pronounced changes in brain morphometric and affective temperament even though these seem to represent distinct mechanistic pathways. A major goal of future studies should be to define critical time periods for the impact of adversity and strategies for intervening to prevent or reverse the effects of adverse childhood life experiences.
['Kuhn|Manuel|M|', 'Scharfenort|Robert|R|', 'Schümann|Dirk|D|', 'Schiele|Miriam A|MA|', 'Münsterkötter|Anna L|AL|', 'Deckert|Jürgen|J|', 'Domschke|Katharina|K|', 'Haaker|Jan|J|', 'Kalisch|Raffael|R|', 'Pauli|Paul|P|', 'Reif|Andreas|A|', 'Romanos|Marcel|M|', 'Zwanzger|Peter|P|', 'Lonsdorf|Tina B|TB|']
D000328:Adult D054523:Adult Survivors of Child Abuse D052636:Allostasis D001007:Anxiety D001921:Brain D002648:Child D003863:Depression D004644:Emotions D005260:Female D066128:Gray Matter D006801:Humans D007089:Image Enhancement D008016:Life Change Events D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D008297:Male D009929:Organ Size D012931:Social Environment D013694:Temperament D055815:Young Adult
mismatch allostatic load adversity VBM childhood maltreatment stressful life events