Altered fear processing in adolescents with a history of severe childhood maltreatment: an fMRI study.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Children with a history of maltreatment suffer from altered emotion processing but the neural basis of this phenomenon is unknown. This pioneering functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the effects of severe childhood maltreatment on emotion processing while controlling for psychiatric conditions, medication and substance abuse. METHOD:Twenty medication-naive, substance abuse-free adolescents with a history of childhood abuse, 20 psychiatric control adolescents matched on psychiatric diagnoses but with no maltreatment and 27 healthy controls underwent a fMRI emotion discrimination task comprising fearful, angry, sad happy and neutral dynamic facial expressions. RESULTS:Maltreated participants responded faster to fearful expressions and demonstrated hyper

SUBMITTER: Hart H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6088776 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature