The Relationship Between Childhood Maltreatment and Endocannabinoid Signalling in Social Processing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Childhood maltreatment (CM) has serious consequences on both stress and social processing, each potentially conveying increased risk for the development of various psychiatric disorders. As an integral neuromodulator of stress and social processing, the endocannabinoid (eCB) system may mediate the psychophysiological impacts of CM that increase vulnerability to pathology. Currently, the relationship between CM, social processing, and eCB signalling is poorly understood and existing literature is limited in scope. Specifically, research has focused on threat-related social processing in favour of other important modalities, such as social evaluation. Aims: The present study aimed to explore the relationship between CM exposure, eCB signalling, and the processing of social evaluation to provide mechanistic insight into the long-term behavioural psychophysiological consequences of CM. Methods: Healthy adults (N=72) completed two in-person sessions. During session one, participants were screened, and CM was assessed via retrospective self-report using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). During the subsequent experimental session (session two), participants completed a computer-based social processing task evaluating behavioural and psychophysiological responses to giving and receiving social judgement. Psychophysiological measurements included skin conductance response (SCR) and facial electromyography (EMG). Blood samples were collected at the beginning of the experimental session to measure baseline eCB levels, including anandamide (AEA) and 2-Arachidonoylglycerol (2-AG). Results: Approximately 54% of participants reported any type of maltreatment in the CTQ, with emotional abuse and emotional neglect being the most prevalent. Emotional neglect was associated with negative self-directed biases in the social judgement task. Receiving judgement elicited greater arousal responses (SCR), while giving judgement produced greater affective (EMG) responses. Negative affect appeared to be related to social group dissonance. Furthermore, baseline AEA levels were associated with affect as assessed via EMG activity. Conclusions: CM is associated with negative self-directed biases in social processing. Furthermore, affective responses to giving judgement appear to be related to group dissonance, highlighting the importance of the social group in social processing. Finally, baseline levels of AEA may mediate affective responses to social judgement. Overall, these findings suggest eCB signalling, particularly that of AEA, may serve as a novel therapeutic target in psychopathologies characterized by vulnerable social processing.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".