Gina Yi

Objective: The goal of this study was to identify the neurobiological differences in self-processing during self-face recognition influenced by characteristics of maltreatment including presence, duration, and accumulation of types. Methods: Adolescents with depression (N = 94) were assessed thorough psychological interviews for depressive disorder and a history of abuse. Participants completed a visual self-recognition task inside an fMRI where they viewed various images of their own face morphed with a stranger’s face to varying percentages. They were tasked to identify whether each image resembled themselves or another across 3 emotions (sad, happy, neutral). Multiple regressions using mean-centered abuse duration, abuse presence, and cumulative score (number of types of abuse) as well as other additional covariates (gender, depression severity, medication dosage, puberty) were used to explore the effect childhood maltreatment has on neurobiological activation of self-recognition and processing brain regions. Results: During self-face recognition, longer duration of abuse was associated with increased activity in the superior and middle temporal gyri, occipital lobe, fusiform, and cerebellum. Higher cumulative abuse score was associated with hyperactivity in the middle temporal gyrus. Compared to non-abused depressed adolescents, abused-depressed adolescents only had hyperactivity in the cerebellum after 6+ years. Discussion: The abnormal cortical activity was associated with regions important for cognitive and emotion control and social and self-referential processing. This suggests that chronic maltreatment may be linked to integration of negative self-processing as well as deficits in goal-directed attention.