Hippocampal subfield and amygdala volumes are associated with difficulties in emotion regulation of depressed patients with a history of childhood maltreatment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Previous studies indicate that hippocampal (subfield) and amygdala volumes may correlate with specific cognitive functions, coping strategies and emotion regulation. Here, we investigated associations between emotional processing and volumes of hippocampal subfields and amygdala. We focused on depressed patients since emotional dysregulation and hippocampal volume shrinkage are characteristic of them. Our hypothesis was that in depressed individuals, maladaptive emotional behaviors will correlate with hippocampal and amygdala volume shrinkage. Methods: We recruited depressed patients with a history of childhood maltreatment (n=21), depressed patients without maltreatment (n=18), and matched controls (n=21). Their brains were imaged with magnetic resonance imaging and area reconstruction was performed with the FreeSurfer software. History of maltreatment was assessed with Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Emotion processing difficulties were evaluated using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). Results: Depressed patients, especially maltreated subjects had small, but nonsignificant hippocampal and amygdala volume decrease (≤10%) and displayed pronounced difficulties in emotion regulation. In maltreated individuals, we found positive correlations between CERQ-rumination and volume of the right CA3, as well as between CERQ-positive-reappraisal and volume of the left presubiculum. In maltreated individuals, CTQ-emotional-abuse scores showed positive correlation with amygdala volumes of both hemispheres. In non-maltreated depressed patients, we found negative correlations between CERQ-rumination and volumes of the right hippocampus and amygdala, as well as several subfields of the right hippocampus. Furthermore, in non-maltreated depressed patients, CTQ-emotional-neglect had a positive correlation with the volume of the right CA3. Overall, among the tests, CERQ-rumination scores had the largest number of correlations with hippocampal subfield volumes mainly in non-maltreated depressed subjects. We found no correlation between alexithymia and brain area. Amygdala volumes had very few correlations, and only with CERQ and CTQ scores. Limitations: Relatively small sample size, cross-sectional design, retrospective self-report questionnaire to assess adverse childhood experiences and no amygdala subnuclei segmentation. Conclusions: We could not confirm our hypothesis that maladaptive emotional behavior is associated with hippocampal volume shrinkage. Future studies should preferably focus on functional neuroimaging when examining complex emotional phenomena.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".