Association between childhood trauma and risk for obesity: a putative neurocognitive developmental pathway
Creators: name: Luo, Qiang
name: Zhang, Lingli
name: Huang, Chu-Chung
name: Zheng, Yan
name: Kanen, Jonathan W.
name: Zhao, Qi
name: Yao, Ye
name: Quinlan, Erin B.
name: Jia, Tianye
name: Banaschewski, Tobias
name: Bokde, Arun L. W.
name: Bromberg, Uli
name: Büchel, Christian
name: Flor, Herta
name: Frouin, Vincent
name: Garavan, Hugh
name: Gowland, Penny
name: Heinz, Andreas
name: Ittermann, Bernd
name: Martinot, Jean-Luc
name: Martinot, Marie-Laure Paillère
name: Nees, Frauke
name: Orfanos, Dimitri Papadopoulos
name: Poustka, Luise
name: Hohmann, Sarah
name: Fröhner, Juliane H.
name: Smolka, Michael N.
name: Walter, Henrik
name: Whelan, Robert
name: Sahakian, Barbara J.
name: Schumann, Gunter
name: Li, Fei
name: Feng, Jianfeng
name: Desrivières, Sylvane
name: Robbins, Trevor W.
Publisher: name: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Year: 2020
Subjects: Research Article
Childhood trauma
Adult obesity
Neurocognitive control pathway
Structural brain imaging

description: Funder: Zhangjiang Lab
description: Funder: the Shanghai AI Platform for Diagnosis and Treatment of Brain Diseases
description: Funder: the Project of Zhangjiang Hi-Tech District Management Committee
description: Funder: Shanghai (grant 2016-17)
description: Funder: BRIDGET (JPND: BRain Imaging, cognition Dementia and next generation GEnomics); Grant(s): MR/N027558/1
description: Funder: Associazione Emma e Ernesto Rulfo per la Genetica Medica (IT)
description: Funder: the Swedish Research Council FORMAS
description: Funder: the Medical Research Council
description: Funder: the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London
description: Funder: the Human Brain Project (HBP SGA 2)
description: Funder: the Fondation de France, the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale
description: Funder: the Assistance-Publique-Hôpitaux-de-Paris and INSERM (interface grant)
description: Funder: Paris Sud University IDEX 2012
description: Funder: cross-NIH alliance that funds Big Data to Knowledge Centres of Excellence
description: Abstract: Background: Childhood trauma increases the risk for adult obesity through multiple complex pathways, and the neural substrates are yet to be determined. Methods: Participants from three population-based neuroimaging cohorts, including the IMAGEN cohort, the UK Biobank (UKB), and the Human Connectome Project (HCP), were recruited. Voxel-based morphometry analysis of both childhood trauma and body mass index (BMI) was performed in the longitudinal IMAGEN cohort; validation of the findings was performed in the UKB. White-matter connectivity analysis was conducted to study the structural connectivity between the identified brain region and subdivisions of the hypothalamus in the HCP. Results: In IMAGEN, a smaller frontopolar cortex (FPC) was associated with both childhood abuse (CA) (β = − .568, 95%CI − .942 to − .194; p = .003) and higher BMI (β = − .086, 95%CI − .128 to − .043; p &lt; .001) in male participants, and these findings were validated in UKB. Across seven data collection sites, a stronger negative CA-FPC association was correlated with a higher positive CA-BMI association (β = − 1.033, 95%CI − 1.762 to − .305; p = .015). Using 7-T diffusion tensor imaging data (n = 156), we found that FPC was the third most connected cortical area with the hypothalamus, especially the lateral hypothalamus. A smaller FPC at age 14 contributed to higher BMI at age 19 in those male participants with a history of CA, and the CA-FPC interaction enabled a model at age 14 to account for some future weight gain during a 5-year follow-up (variance explained 5.8%). Conclusions: The findings highlight that a malfunctioning, top-down cognitive or behavioral control system, independent of genetic predisposition, putatively contributes to excessive weight gain in a particularly vulnerable population, and may inform treatment approaches.