Disruptions in autobiographical memory processing in depression and the emergence of memory therapeutics

Research Review: Why do prospective and retrospective measures of maltreatment differ? A narrative review

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment contributes to a large mental health burden worldwide. Different measures of childhood maltreatment are not equivalent and may capture meaningful differences. In particular, prospective and retrospective measures of maltreatment identify different groups of individuals and are differentially associated with psychopathology. However, the reasons behind these discrepancies have not yet been comprehensively mapped.

METHODS

In this review, we draw on multi-disciplinary research and present an integrated framework to explain maltreatment measurement disagreement.

RESULTS

We identified three interrelated domains. First, methodological issues related to measurement and data collection methods. Second, the role of memory in influencing retrospective reports of maltreatment. Finally, the motivations individuals may have to disclose, withhold, or fabricate information about maltreatment.

CONCLUSIONS

A greater understanding of maltreatment measurement disagreement may point to new ways to conceptualise and assess maltreatment. Furthermore, it may help uncover mechanisms underlying maltreatment-related psychopathology and targets for novel interventions.

Prospective and Retrospective Measures of Child Maltreatment and Their Association With Psychopathology: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Importance

Prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment identify largely different groups of individuals. However, it is unclear if these measures are differentially associated with psychopathology.

Objective

To analyze the associations of prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment with psychopathology.

Data Sources

Based on a preregistered protocol, Embase, PsycInfo, and MEDLINE were searched for peer-reviewed studies published by January 1, 2023, that measured the associations of prospective and retrospective measures of child maltreatment with psychopathology.

Study Selection

Titles and abstracts of all articles captured by the search and full texts of potentially eligible studies were independently screened by 2 authors. Observational studies with measures of the association of prospective and retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment with psychopathology were included.

Data Extraction and Synthesis

Multiple investigators independently extracted data. Multilevel random-effects meta-analyses were used to pool the results and test predictors of heterogeneity.

Main Outcome and Measures

Associations between prospective or retrospective measures of child maltreatment and psychopathology, both unadjusted and adjusted (ie, the association between prospective measures of maltreatment and psychopathology adjusted for retrospective measures, and vice versa), and moderation of these associations by preselected variables.

Results

The meta-analyses were based on 24 studies including 15 485 individuals (51.0% female; mean age, 21.3 years at retrospective report). Retrospective measures of childhood maltreatment showed stronger associations with psychopathology relative to prospective measures in both unadjusted analyses (retrospective measures: odds ratio [OR], 2.21; 95%, 1.94-2.42 vs prospective measures: OR, 1.56; 95% CI, 1.39-1.76) and adjusted analyses (retrospective measures: OR, 2.14; 95% CI, 1.90-2.42 vs prospective measures: OR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.13-1.41). There was no statistically significant moderation of the unadjusted or adjusted associations between prospective measures of child maltreatment and psychopathology. The associations between retrospective measures and psychopathology were stronger when the assessment of psychopathology was based on self-reports and was focused on internalizing or emotional disorders.

Conclusions and Relevance

Psychopathology is more strongly associated with retrospective measures-which capture the first-person, subjective appraisal of childhood events reflected in memory recall-compared to prospective measures-which essentially capture third-person accounts of such events. Maltreatment-related psychopathology may be driven by subjective interpretations of experiences, distressing memories, and associated schemas, which could be targeted by cognitive interventions.

Specificity and valence of adolescents' turning point memory narratives: Relationships with depressive symptoms over time

Although recent research suggests that, for community youth, greater specific (episodic) detail in self-relevant turning point memory narratives predicts depressive symptoms over time, no research has investigated whether the narratives' specificity similarly predicts depression. Therefore, we investigated whether recalling a specific (unique, 24-hour or less) turning point narrative predicted youth depressive symptoms concurrently and across 6 months (Study 1), and, for a subset of participants, three years (Study 2). We also examined whether the valence of the implication of the experience for self (the resolution) explained additional variance and interacted with memory specificity. For Study 1 (N = 320, M = 16.9 years, 81% female), a specific (rather than a non-specific) turning point predicted greater depressive symptoms concurrently but not longitudinally, whereas a negative resolution predicted both concurrent and longitudinal depressive symptoms. The moderation result showed that a specific turning point predicted escalating depressive symptoms across six months when the resolution was negative. Study 2 (N = 68) additionally showed that a specific turning point predicted increased depressive symptoms three years later. These findings contrast with research suggesting that specific memories are related to better mental health and highlight the complexity of the role of memory in emerging youth depression.

Early-life risk factors for depression among young adults in the United States general population: Attributable risks and gender differences

BACKGROUND

This study adopts individual and societal-level approaches to examine the contribution of childhood risk factors to major depressive episodes (MDE) in 2526 American young adults.

METHODS

Nationally representative data from the 2017 U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics - Transition into Adulthood Supplement (PSID-TAS) were analyzed using multivariate methods to assess the impact of parental mental illness, childhood adversities, childhood mental disorders, and childhood physical conditions. Adjusted odds ratios and population attributable risk proportions (PARPs) are calculated to estimate the proportion of MDE cases related to risk factors.

RESULTS

The 12-month prevalence of positive screens for MDE was 25.4 %. Approximately 34 % of these were attributable to childhood mental disorders, 24 % to childhood physical conditions, 21 % to childhood adversities, and 16 % to parental mental illness. Childhood and parental depression were critical risk factors, both at the individual (odds ratio exceeding 2) and societal (PARP approximately 24 %) levels. Gender-specific risk factors were identified, with childhood physical abuse and childhood anxiety disorders constituting risk factors for females, and childhood externalizing disorders and childhood headaches as risk factors for males. Approximately 60 % of U.S. young adult MDE cases are attributable to risk factors before age 18.

LIMITATIONS

Possible over reporting of MDE may have biased the associations between predictors and depression.

CONCLUSIONS

Exposure to depression at a young age-one's own or parental depression-is a robust risk factor for both genders. Policies and interventions focused at alleviating the societal burden of depression should value its generational transmission.

Temporal Interactions between Neural Proxies forMemory Recall, Negative Affect, and EmotionRegulation in Major Depression

Dysfunction in emotion regulation (ER) and autobiographical memory are components of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, little is known about how they mechanistically interact with mood disturbances in real time. Using machine learning-based neural signatures, we can quantify negative affect (NA), ER, and memory continuously to evaluate how these processes dynamically interact in MDD. Unmedicated individuals with MDD (N=45) and healthy volunteers (HV; N=38) completed a negative autobiographical memory functional magnetic resonance imaging task wherein they recalled, distanced from (an ER strategy), and immersed into memories. We used a negative affect signature (PINES) and an emotion regulation signature (ERS) to quantify moment-to-moment NA and ER. We then examined whether memory engagement, indexed by hippocampal activity, predicted subsequent change in PINES and ERS over time. During memory recall and immersion, greater hippocampal activity predicted increased PINES across groups. During distancing, greater hippocampal activity in HVs predicted increased ERS but not PINES. In MDD, greater hippocampal activity predicted increased PINES but not ERS. Findings suggest abnormalities in the real-time relationship between memory, NA, and ER in MDD. During distancing, as predicted, HVs showed an attenuation of the linkage between memory engagement and NA, and they had subsequent increases in ER following memory reactivation. In contrast, MDD was characterized by continued linkage between memory engagement and NA, without subsequent increases in ER. Deficits in engagement of ER and ineffective modulation of NA following negative memory recall may contribute to the mood disturbances in MDD and are potential targets for clinical intervention.

Can neutral episodic memories become emotional? Evidence from facial expressions and subjective feelings

Maladaptive emotional memories are a transdiagnostic feature of mental health problems. Therefore, understanding whether and how emotional memories can change might help to prevent and treat mental disorders. We tested whether neutral memories of naturalistic events can retroactively acquire positive or negative affect, in a preregistered three-day Modification of Valence in Episodes (MOVIE) paradigm. On Day 1, participants (N = 41) encoded memories of neutral movie scenes, representing lifelike naturalistic experiences. On Day 2, they retrieved each episode before viewing a happy, sad, or neutral scene from the same movie (yielding a within-subjects design with a neutral-negative, neutral-positive, and neutral-neutral condition). On Day 3, participants again retrieved each memory from Day 1. We assessed the affective tone of episodes through facial expressions of positive and negative affect (using facial electromyography, fEMG) and through self-reported feelings. Positive updating of neutral episodes led to increased expressions of positive affect, whereas negative updating led to increased self-reported negative feelings. These results suggest that complex neutral episodic memories can retroactively acquire an affective tone, but the effects were modest and inconsistent across affect readouts. Future research should investigate alternative approaches to updating emotional memories that produce more profound changes in the valence of memories.

Future thinking and anticipatory pleasure in adolescents with major depression: Association with depression symptoms and executive functions

OBJECTIVE

Impairments in episodic future thinking and anticipatory pleasure were noted to explain the depressive symptoms in adults however similar studies are not there in adolescents. This study examined whether there are impairments in episodic future thinking and anticipatory pleasure in clinically-depressed adolescents as compared to non-depressed adolescents, and their association with depression when controlled for executive functions and anxiety symptoms among the depressed adolescents.

METHODS

The study included 29 adolescents with major depression and 29 adolescents from local schools through convenient sampling technique. All the participants were assessed with standardized measures of depression and anxiety, episodic future thinking, anticipatory pleasure and executive functioning.

RESULTS

Depressed adolescents significantly differed from the non-depressed adolescents in autobiographical memory specificity, anticipatory pleasure, and specific dimensions of executive functions. The ANCOVAs indicated executive function slightly attenuated group differences on future specificity which were still non-significant (all p's > .05). For memory specificity and for anticipatory pleasure, group differences were still significant at p < .05 level.

CONCLUSION

Adolescents with major depressive episode may display similar, but less pronounced, impairments in future thinking than what is previously reported in adults. Though, autobiographical specificity is prominent. The deficits are attributable to depression than executive functioning deficits.

Practitioner Review: Neurobiological consequences of childhood maltreatment - clinical and therapeutic implications for practitioners

BACKGROUND

Childhood maltreatment is one of the most important preventable risk factors for a wide variety of psychiatric disorders. Further, when psychiatric disorders emerge in maltreated individuals they typically do so at younger ages, with greater severity, more psychiatric comorbid conditions, and poorer response to established treatments, resulting in a more pernicious course with an increased risk for suicide. Practitioners treating children, adolescents, and young adults with psychiatric disorders will likely encounter the highest prevalence of clients with early-onset maltreatment-associated psychiatric disorders. These may be some of their most challenging cases.

METHOD

In this report, we explore key validated alterations in brain structure, function, and connectivity associated with exposure to childhood maltreatment as potential mechanisms behind their patients' clinical presentations.

RESULTS

We then summarize key behavioral presentations likely associated with neurobiological alterations and propose a toolkit of established trauma and skills-based strategies that may help diminish symptoms and foster recovery. We also discuss how some of these alterations may serve as latent vulnerability factors for the possible development of future psychopathology.

CONCLUSIONS

Research on the neurobiological consequences of childhood adversity provides a vastly enriched biopsychosocial understanding of the developmental origins of health and pathology that will hopefully lead to fundamental advances in clinical psychology and psychiatry.

Bayesian evaluation of diverging theories of episodic and affective memory distortions in dysphoria

People suffering from dysphoria retrieve autobiographical memories distorted in content and affect, which may contribute to the aetiology and maintenance of depression. However, key memory difficulties in dysphoria remain elusive because theories disagree how memories of different valence are altered. Here, we assessed the psychophysiological expression of affect and retrieved episodic detail while participants with dysphoria (but without a diagnosed mental illness) and participants without dysphoria relived positive, negative, and neutral memories. We show that participants with dysphoria retrieve positive memories with diminished episodic detail and negative memories with enhanced detail, compared to participants without dysphoria. This is in line with negativity bias but not overgeneral memory bias theories. According to confirmatory analyses, participants with dysphoria also express diminished positive affect and enhanced negative affect when retrieving happy memories, but exploratory analyses suggest that this increase in negative affect may not be robust. Further confirmatory analyses showed that affective responses to memories are not related to episodic detail and already present during the experience of new emotional events. Our results indicate that affective memory distortions may not emerge from mnemonic processes but from general distortions in positive affect, which challenges assumptions of memory theories and therapeutics. Protocol registration: The Stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on the 18rd of March 2021. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14605374.v1 .

How do the sleep features that characterise depression impact memory?

Depression is associated with general sleep disturbance and abnormalities in sleep physiology. For example, compared with control subjects, depressed patients exhibit lower sleep efficiency, longer rapid eye movement (REM) sleep duration, and diminished slow-wave activity during non-REM sleep. A separate literature indicates that depression is also associated with many distinguishing memory characteristics, including emotional memory bias, overgeneral autobiographical memory, and impaired memory suppression. The sleep and memory features that hallmark depression may both contribute to the onset and maintenance of the disorder. Despite our rapidly growing understanding of the intimate relationship between sleep and memory, our comprehension of how sleep and memory interact in the aetiology of depression remains poor. In this narrative review, we consider how the sleep signatures of depression could contribute to the accompanying memory characteristics.

My Turning Point Tells the Story: A Longitudinal Examination of Greater Episodic Detail and Youth Depressive Symptoms

Although research findings show that the personal memories of people who are depressed are characterized by sparse episodic detail, under some circumstances, the opposite pattern emerges. Specifically, a recent study (Salmon et al., 2021) has shown that for community youth, greater episodic detail in a highly self-relevant narrative (a life turning point) predicted increased depressive symptoms concurrently and one year later. In a new longitudinal study of young people (N = 320 at Time 1, M = 16.9 years; 81% female) followed up over six months, we aimed to replicate and extend this finding. In Study A, we compared the turning point with a narrative about a conflict event, to establish whether the detail in a turning point memory uniquely predicted depressive symptoms. Supporting the first hypothesis, at both time-points, greater episodic detail was concurrently positively associated with depressive symptoms for turning point narratives only. Contrary to our second hypothesis, greater detail did not predict increased depressive symptoms longitudinally. The reverse pattern was significant, however, in that greater initial depressive symptoms predicted greater detail uniquely in the turning point narrative six months later. In Study B, we determined that the concurrent association between episodic detail and depressive symptoms in turning points (but not conflict events) was exacerbated by linguistic markers of self-focus (greater I-talk and lower distancing language). These findings suggest that greater detail in a turning point narrative may uniquely signify risk of psychological distress when youth narrate the experience with heightened self-focus.

Aberrant neural network activation during reliving of autobiographical memories in adolescent depression

BACKGROUND

Adolescents with depression exhibit negative biases in autobiographical memory with detrimental consequences for their self-concept and well-being. Investigating how adolescents relive positive autobiographical memories and activate the underlying neural networks could reveal mechanisms that drive such biases. This study investigated neural networks when reliving positive and neutral memories, and how neural activity is modulated by valence and vividness in adolescents with and without depression.

METHODS

Adolescents (N = 69; n = 17 with depression) retrieved positive and neutral autobiographical memories. On a separate day, they relived these memories during fMRI scanning, and reported on pleasantness and vividness after reliving each memory. We used a multivariate, data-driven approach - event-related independent component analysis (eICA) - to characterize neural networks supporting autobiographical recollection.

RESULTS

Adolescents with depression reported their positive memories as significantly less pleasant compared to healthy controls, while subjective vividness was unaffected. Using eICA, we identified a broad autobiographical memory network, and subnetworks related to reliving positive vs neutral memories. These subnetworks comprised a 'self-referential processing network' including medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and temporoparietal junction, anti-correlating with parts of the central executive network and salience network. Adolescents with depression exhibited aberrant activation in this self-referential network, but only when reliving relatively 'low' pleasant memories.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings provide first insights into how the quality of reliving autobiographical memories in adolescents with depression may relate to aberrant self-referential neural network activation, and underscore the potential of targeting memory reliving in therapeutic interventions to foster self-esteem and diminish depressive symptoms.

Toward a computational understanding of how reminiscing about positive autobiographical memories influences decision-making under risk

Recent computational psychiatric research has dissected decision-making under risk into different underlying cognitive computational constructs and identified disease-specific changes in these constructs. Studies are underway to investigate what kind of behavioral or psychological interventions can restore these cognitive, computational constructs. In our previous study, we showed that reminiscing about positive autobiographical memories reduced risk aversion and affected probability weighting in the opposite direction from that observed in psychiatric disorders. However, in that study, we compared positive versus neutral memory retrieval by using a within-subjects crossover posttest design. Therefore, the change of decision-making from baseline is unclear. Furthermore, we used a hypothetical decision-making task and did not include monetary incentives. We attempt to address these limitations and investigated how reminiscing about positive autobiographical memories influences decision-making under risk using a between-subjects pretest posttest comparison design with performance-contingent monetary incentives. In thirty-eight healthy, young adults, we found that reminiscing about positive memories reinforced the commonly observed inverted S-shaped nonlinear probability weighting (f = 0.345, medium to large in effect size). In contrast, reminiscing about positive memories did not affect risk aversion in general. Given that the change in probability weighting after reminiscing about positive memories is in the opposite direction from that observed in psychiatric disorders, our results indicate that positive autobiographical memory retrieval might be a useful behavioral intervention strategy for amending the altered decision-making under risk in psychiatric diseases.

Stage 2 Registered Report: Epigenetic Intergenerational Transmission: Mothers' Adverse Childhood Experiences and DNA Methylation

OBJECTIVE

Individual differences in risk for mental disorders over the lifespan are shaped by forces acting before the individual is born-in utero, but likely even earlier, during the mother's own childhood. The environmental epigenetics hypothesis proposes that sustained effects of environmental conditions on gene expression are mediated by epigenetic mechanisms. Recent human studies have shown that adversities in childhood are correlated with DNA methylation (DNAm) in adulthood. In the current study, we tested the following pre-registered hypotheses: Mothers' adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are correlated with DNAm in peripheral blood during pregnancy (hypothesis 1) and in cord blood samples from newborn infants (hypothesis 2), and women's depression and anxiety symptoms during pregnancy mediate the association between mothers' ACE exposure and prenatal/neonatal DNA methylation (hypothesis 3).

METHOD

Data were from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Accessible Resource for Integrated Epigenomic Studies substudy. Women provided retrospective self-reports during pregnancy of ACE exposure. We conducted an epigenome-wide association study testing whether mothers' ACE exposure, cumulative score (0-10), was associated with DNAm in maternal antenatal blood and infant cord blood in more than 450,000 CpG (point on DNA sequence where cytosine and guanine base pairs are linked by a phosphate, where methylation usually occurs) sites on the Illumina 450K BeadChip. Analyses for cord blood were separated by infant sex, a pre-registered analysis.

RESULTS

Hypothesis 1: In 896 mother-infant pairs with available methylation and ACE exposure data, there were no significant associations between mothers' ACE score and DNAm from antenatal peripheral blood, after controlling for covariates. Hypothesis 2: In infant cord blood, there were 5 CpG sites significantly differentially methylated in relation to mothers' ACEs (false discovery rate [FDR] < .05), but only in male offspring. Effect sizes were medium, with partial eta squared values ranging from 0.060 to 0.078. CpG sites were in genes related to mitochondrial function and neuronal development in the cerebellum. Hypothesis 3: There was no mediation by maternal anxiety/depression symptoms found between mothers' ACEs score and DNAm in the significant CpG sites in male cord blood. Mediation was not tested in antenatal peripheral blood, because no direct association between mothers' ACE score and antenatal peripheral blood was found.

CONCLUSION

Our results show that mothers' ACE exposure is associated with DNAm in male offspring, supporting the notion that DNAm could be a marker of intergenerational biological embedding of mothers' childhood adversity.

STUDY REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Epigenetic Intergenerational Transmission: Mothers' Adverse Childhood Experiences and DNA Methylation; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.03.008.

Associations Between Objective and Subjective Experiences of Childhood Maltreatment and the Course of Emotional Disorders in Adulthood

Importance

A history of childhood maltreatment is associated with an unfavorable course of illness for emotional disorders. However, the origins and mechanisms underlying these associations are unknown.

Objective

To examine the relative associations of objective and subjective measures of childhood maltreatment and continuity in psychopathology with the course of emotional disorders in adulthood.

Design, Setting, and Participants

This prospective cohort study followed up until age 40 years participants residing in a metropolitan county of the US Midwest with substantiated records of childhood physical and sexual abuse and/or neglect between 1967 and 1971 and a demographically matched group of participants experiencing no abuse or neglect in childhood. The collected data were analyzed between October 2021 and April 2022.

Exposures

The objective experience of childhood maltreatment before age 12 years was prospectively measured through official court records, whereas the subjective experience was measured through retrospective self-report at a mean (SD) age of 29 (3.8) years. Current and previous lifetime psychopathology was also assessed at a mean age of 29 (3.8) years.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Symptoms of depression and anxiety were measured at mean (SD) ages of 39.5 (3.5) and 41.2 (3.5) years using Poisson regression models.

Results

In a cohort of 1196 participants (582 [48.7%] female and 614 [51.3%] male) followed up to age 40 years, those with objective plus subjective measures of childhood maltreatment had a greater number of subsequent follow-up phases with depression or anxiety than controls (depression: incidence rate ratio [IRR], 2.28 [95% CI, 1.65-3.15]; anxiety: IRR, 2.30 [95% CI, 1.54-3.42]), as did those with subjective-only measures (depression: IRR, 1.49 [95% CI, 1.02-2.18]; anxiety: IRR, 1.58 [95% CI, 0.99-2.52]). In contrast, participants with objective-only measures did not have a greater number of follow-up phases with depression or anxiety (depression: IRR, 1.37 [95% CI, 0.89-2.11]; anxiety: IRR, 1.40 [95% CI, 0.84-2.31]). Current and lifetime psychopathology measured at the time the subjective experience was assessed explained its association with a later course of emotional disorders in participants with subjective-only measures but not in those with objective plus subjective measures.

Conclusions and Relevance

In this cohort study, the associations seen between childhood maltreatment and poor course of emotional disorders over the subsequent decade were largely attributable to the subjective experience of maltreatment, which was partly explained by continuity in psychopathology. Modification of the subjective experience of childhood maltreatment could improve the longitudinal course of emotional disorders.

Expression of ANK3 moderates the association between childhood trauma and affective traits in severe mental disorders

Exposure to early life trauma increases the risk of psychopathology later in life. Here we investigated if ANK3 mRNA levels influence the relationship between childhood trauma experiences and clinical characteristics in mental disorders. A sample of 174 patients with bipolar disorder and 291 patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorder were included. Patients were diagnosed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV, and childhood trauma was assessed using the childhood trauma questionnaire. Age at illness onset and number of psychotic and affective episodes were assessed from interview and medical records. Current depressive symptoms were measured using the calgary depression scale for schizophrenia and the inventory for depressive symptomatology. ANK3 expression was analyzed in whole blood using the Illumina HumanHT-12 v4 Expression BeadChip. Analyses were carried out with the Process adjusted for confounders. Within the total sample, patients with both high ANK3 expression and with the most severe childhood sexual abuse had more manic/hypomanic episodes and an earlier age at onset of the first episode. ANK3 mRNA levels also moderated the relationship between emotional neglect and manic/hypomanic episodes. Our results suggest that ANK3 expression levels moderate the association between specific types of childhood trauma and affective traits in mental disorders.

Thinking about the consequences: The detrimental role of future thinking on intrapersonal problem-solving in depression

Despite the fact that depressed individuals encounter a multitude of social problems in daily life, research on social problem-solving has largely been dominated by research on interpersonal problems and there is a paucity of research on intrapersonal problems. Intrapersonal problems are linked to one's subjective psychological functioning and involve managing one's own feelings and emotions pertaining to the self. Given that depressed individuals exhibit impaired emotion regulation, it is possible that their ability to solve intrapersonal problems may be impaired, especially in relation to future thinking. The aim of this study was to investigate whether future thinking, in the form of thinking about the consequences of a problem being resolved or remaining unresolved has an impact on intrapersonal problem-solving in depression. Forty-five depressed and fifty-four non-depressed participants completed a modified version of the means end problem-solving task (MEPS). In the task, participants were presented with a series of intrapersonal problems and were asked to generate consequences of the problems being resolved or remaining unresolved. Participants were then presented with a positive resolution to each of the problems and were asked to solve the problem to achieve the positive resolution. Following a delay, participants were asked to recall all of the consequences initially generated. Overall, depressed individuals generated fewer-relevant means and less effective solutions to problems than non-depressed participants. Depressed individuals also demonstrated impaired intrapersonal problem-solving following the generation of resolved and unresolved consequences, compared to a baseline condition, where no consequences were generated. These findings suggest that future thinking impairs intrapersonal problem-solving and indicates that a more nuanced approach to future thinking and social problem-solving in depression is needed across different real-life problem-solving contexts.

The Hebrew version of the adolescent and adult time inventory-time attitudes scales (AATI-TA): a validation study

In the present study, we examined the construct validity of scores on the Hebrew version of the Adolescent and Adult Time Inventory-Time Attitudes Scale (AATI-TA). The AATI-TA was translated into Hebrew by bilingual speakers, using the back-translation method. Participants included 452 young adults (M_age = 22.47, SD_age = 1.98, 51.5% female). Several measures of psychological well-being were used to establish convergent validity, including scales assessing self-esteem, life satisfaction, and optimism, and depressive, anxiety, and somatic symptoms. Internal consistency estimates for AATI-TA scores were high and confirmatory factor analyses supported the six-factor structure. Correlational analyses indicated the expected relationships between time attitudes and measures of psychological well-being, providing convergent validity support for the AATI-TA scores. The findings of this study support the use of the Hebrew version of the AATI-TA in further studies about time attitudes.

Dorsolateral prefrontal activation in depressed young adults with and without suicidal ideation during an emotional autobiographical memory task: A fNIRS study

OBJECTIVE

Previous studies have proved that there is a strong association between dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and mood symptoms. This study aimed at using functional near-infrared spectroscopy technology to invest brain activity in dlPFC of depressed individuals with and without suicidal ideation during emotional autobiographical memory test, and to understand their differences in brain cognitive mechanisms. It is helpful to improve our ability to predict and subsequently to prevent suicide.

METHODS

85 young adults participated in the study by a simple random sampling method, with health control (34participants), depression with suicidal ideation (17participants), and depression without suicidal ideation (34participants). The average oxyhemoglobin in dlPFC of subjects during EAMT was collected by a 53-channel fNIRS imaging device.

RESULTS

A marginal significant difference was found between three groups in left dlPFC and right dlPFC. Post hoc analysis revealed that: (1) under negative emotion, depression without suicidal ideation group had higher activation than healthy control group in left dlPFC. (2) under positive emotion, depression with suicidal ideation group had lower activation than healthy control in right dlPFC.

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicated that the depressed individuals with suicidal ideation had some deficits in executive function in right dlPFC, while the depressed adults without suicidal ideation may have mechanism of resource compensatory recruitment in left dlPFC and the dlPFC abnormality involved in the pathophysiology, may localize within left hemisphere. The depressed individuals with and without suicidal ideation had the different mechanisms in dlPFC and fNIRS can be a neuroimaging biomarker characterizing or predicting suicidality in depressed individuals.

The Suitability of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire in Criminal Offender Samples

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are common in community samples and are associated with various dysfunctional physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. In this regard, criminal offenders are at specific risk, considering their elevated ACE rates compared with community samples and the associations of ACEs with criminal behaviors. However, assessing ACEs in offender samples by self-reports has been criticized with regard to their validity and reliability. We examined the suitability of ACE-self-reports using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) in a sample of 231 male offenders involved in the German criminal justice system by comparing self-reported to externally rated ACEs to externally rated ACEs based on the information from the offenders' criminal and health-related files and on interviews conducted by forensically trained psychological/psychiatric experts. The accordance between self-ratings and expert ratings was examined considering mean differences, correlations, inter-rater agreement measures, and regression analyses. Offenders themselves reported a higher ACE burden than the one that was rated externally, but there was a strong relationship between CTQ self-assessments and external assessments. However, associations were stronger in offenders seen for risk assessment than in those evaluated for criminal responsibility. Overall, the CTQ seems suitable for use in forensic samples. However, reporting bias in self-reports of ACEs should be expected. Therefore, the combination of self-assessments and external assessments seems appropriate.

Autobiographical memory impairment in chronic schizophrenia: Significance and clinical correlates

Previous studies of autobiographical memory (AM) in schizophrenia yielded a reduction of specificity, richness of details and conscious recollection, which indicate both, quantitative and qualitative AM changes. However, their associations with psychopathological symptoms and neuropsychological deficits were not resolved. Therefore, we sought to investigate AM with respect to psychopathology and neuropsychology in patients with chronic schizophrenia to rule out the influence of different courses of the disease. AM of four lifetime periods was examined in 75 patients and 50 healthy controls by using a semi-structured interview. The recalled episodes were rated for memory specificity. Subsequently, one single event of each period of life was rated for details and experiential aspects of reliving (originality, vividness/visual imagery, emotional re-experiencing and emotional valence). When contrasted with healthy controls, patients recalled a significantly reduced number of episodes and personal semantic facts; moreover, memory specificity of AM was significantly lower in patients than controls. While the richness of details calculated for single events showed only minor, non-significant group differences, vividness and emotional re-experiencing were significantly less pronounced in the patient group. Along with this, AM performance correlated significantly with negative symptoms including apathy as well as verbal memory and executive functions. Our results underline the significance of overgenerality as a key feature of AM in schizophrenia as well as a dissociation between intact number of details of single events and reduced vividness and emotional re-experiencing. The extent of negative symptoms including apathy and impairments of verbal memory/executive functions may explain AM deficits in chronic schizophrenia.

Childhood Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence in Young Adulthood, and Welfare Receipt by Midlife

OBJECTIVE

To investigate prospective associations between type of child abuse (physical, sexual, both), timing (childhood, young adulthood, both), and welfare receipt into middle-age.

METHODS

Database linkage study using the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Kindergarten Children cohort born in 1980 and government administrative databases (N = 3020). We assessed parental tax returns, family and personal background characteristics (1982-1987). At age 22 years, participants answered retrospective questionnaires on experienced childhood abuse (physical, sexual abuse < age 18 years) and intimate partner violence (IPV) (ages 18-22). Main outcome was years on social assistance, on the basis of participant tax returns (ages 23-37 years). Analysis included weights for population representativeness.

RESULTS

Of 1690 participants (54.4% females) with available data, 22.4% reported childhood abuse only, 14.5% IPV only, and 18.5% both. Prevalence of childhood physical, sexual, and both was 20.4%, 12.2%, and 8.3%, respectively. Adjusting for socioeconomic background and individual characteristics, we found that childhood physical abuse alone and physical or sexual abuse combined were associated with a two-fold risk of welfare receipt, as compared to never-abused (adjusted incidence risk ratio 2.43, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.65-3.58; and adjusted incidence risk ratio 2.04, 95% CI, 1.29-3.23, respectively). Repeated abuse (childhood abuse combined with adult IPV) had a three-fold risk (adjusted incidence ratio 3.59, 95% CI, 2.39-5.37).

CONCLUSIONS

Abuse across several developmental periods (childhood and young adulthood) is associated with increased risks of long-term welfare receipt, independently of socioeconomic background. Results indicate a dose-response association. Early prevention and targeted identification are crucial to preventing economic adversity that may potentially lead to intergenerational poverty.

Retrospectively assessed childhood trauma experiences are associated with illness severity in mental disorders adjusted for symptom state

Converging evidence suggests that childhood trauma is a causal factor in schizophrenia (SZ) and in bipolar disorders (BD). Here, we investigated whether retrospective reports are associated with severity of illness, independent of current symptom state in a large sample of participants with SZ or BD. We included 1260 individuals (SZ [n = 461], BD [n = 352]), and healthy controls; HC [n = 447]) recruited from the same catchment area. A history of childhood trauma was obtained with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Diagnosis and episodes were obtained with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I). Clinical symptoms (state) were assessed with the Positive and Negative Syndrome scale (PANSS), the Calgary Depression Scale (CDSS). Trait related illness characteristics were assessed with age at illness onset, number of episodes, and lifetime suicide attempts. Patients who reported multiple types of childhood trauma experiences had significantly more severe illness course including an earlier illness onset, more mood episodes, and increased risk of at least one suicide attempt, also after adjusting for current symptom state. Retrospective assessed childhood trauma experiences are associated with illness severity in mental disorders adjusted for symptom state. Our results strengthen the role of childhood trauma in development of psychopathology.

Changes in Medial Prefrontal Cortex Mediate Effects of Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback on Positive Emotional Memory Biases

Previous research suggests that implicit automatic emotion regulation relies on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). However, most of the human studies supporting this hypothesis have been correlational in nature. In the current study, we examine how changes in mPFC-left amygdala functional connectivity relate to emotional memory biases. In a randomized clinical trial examining the effects of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback on brain mechanisms of emotion regulation, we randomly assigned participants to increase or decrease heart rate oscillations while receiving biofeedback. After several weeks of daily biofeedback sessions, younger and older participants completed an emotional picture memory task involving encoding, recall, and recognition phases as an additional measure in this clinical trial. Participants assigned to increase HRV (Osc+) (n = 84) showed a relatively higher rate of false alarms for positive than negative images than participants assigned to decrease HRV (Osc-) (n = 81). Osc+ participants also recalled relatively more positive compared with negative items than Osc- participants, but this difference was not significant. However, a summary bias score reflecting positive emotional memory bias across recall and recognition was significantly higher in the Osc+ than Osc- condition. As previously reported, the Osc+ manipulation increased left amygdala-mPFC resting-state functional connectivity significantly more than the Osc- manipulation. This increased functional connectivity significantly mediated the effects of the Osc+ condition on emotional bias. These findings suggest that, by increasing mPFC coordination of emotion-related circuits, daily practice increasing heart rate oscillations can increase implicit emotion regulation.

Psychological wellbeing, memories, and future thoughts during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic led countries to place restrictions on the general public in order to protect their safety. These restrictions, however, may have negative psychological consequences as people are restricted in their social and leisure activities and facing daily life stressors. Investigating the relationship between how people are remembering pandemic events and thinking about their futures is important in order to begin to examine the psychological consequences - cognitive and emotional - of the Covid-19 pandemic. The present study examined how characteristics of past and future thinking relate to psychological wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In an online questionnaire study, 904 participants in Germany and the USA recalled and predicted negative and positive events related to the pandemic. Participants completed a series of questionnaires measuring cognitions and psychological symptoms. Participants' current psychological wellbeing related to how they remembered events and thought of their future. Participants reported a greater sense of reliving for past compared to future events. However, future events were more rehearsed than past events. Additionally, the emotional impact of positive and negative events differed for the past and the future. Participants seem to be strongly future oriented during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have a negative view of future events.

Output order effects in autobiographical memory in old age: further evidence for an emotional organisation

It is generally accepted that autobiographical memories (AMs) are organised in associative networks. While both thematic and temporal similarity have been examined as connections among AMs, in the present study we focused on both the positive and negative emotional intensity of events as a possible link among AMs. To do so, we investigated whether the output order with which AMs elicited by cue words were reported can be accounted for emotional intensity of adjacent AMs. Data come from 94 older adults (M [Formula: see text] 67.14; SD [Formula: see text] 6.17) who reported 30 AMs in response to neutral cue words. Positive and negative emotional intensity of AMs were assessed on two separate scales (happiness and sadness). The output order was modeled based on a dual mixed-effects autoregressive model, where the strength of the autoregressive effect indicates how much the emotional intensity of an AM can be predicted by the emotional intensity of the previously reported AM. Results show that there were significant autoregressive effects for both the happiness and sadness ratings (accounting for 4% of variance). We also observed cross-over effects, such that the happiness rating of an AM was predicted by the sadness rating of the previously reported AM (and vice versa). Moreover, we found individual differences in the strength of the autoregressive effects. For the sadness ratings, these individual differences tended to be related to the participant's mood state, particularly so during the first output positions. Together, these findings demonstrate that there is a substantive effect of emotional intensity on the output order with which AMs are reported-even when elicited by cue words. Based on the premise that the output order of AMs informs about the organisation of autobiographical memory, our results highlight the role of emotional associations among AMs in old age.

An analysis of dynamic, bidirectional associations between memory and verbal fluency with depressive symptoms in middle- and older-aged adults: A cohort study

OBJECTIVES

This study compared two approaches to analyzing bidirectional associations between aspects of cognition-specifically, verbal memory and fluency-and depression using multi-wave longitudinal data. The cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) does not distinguish between- versus within-person variation, whereas the random-intercepts CLPM (RI-CLPM) partitions variation into a stable, trait-like component that varies across individuals and a wave-specific deviation that varies within individuals.

METHODS

Observational study of 47,719 adults ages 45 to 95 from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (mean age = 63 years, SD = 9 years at first assessment; 57 % female). Participants completed at least four of 8 biennial waves of data collection from 2004 and 2020. Depressive symptoms were assessed by the EURO-D. Cognition was assessed by animal fluency, and immediate and delayed word recall. Multi-group CLPMs and RI-CLPMs were fit on middle-aged (45-65 year) and older (65+ years) males and females.

RESULTS

The estimates from the CLPMs indicated bidirectionality in the associations between cognition and depression, whereas the RI-CLPMs provided clearer evidence that changes in depression may produce subsequent changes in cognition, rather than vice versa. Prospective associations were small and consistent across age, sex and cognitive measure.

LIMITATIONS

Measures of executive function-a domain of cognition affected by aging and related to mood-were not available.

CONCLUSIONS

CLPMs and RI-CLPMs address conceptually distinct questions about how verbal memory and fluency may be dynamically related to depression, and therefore, produce different inferences from the same data about how these aspects of cognition and depression are related.

A systematic review of the pharmacological modulation of autobiographical memory specificity

Background

Over-general autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval is proposed to have a causal role in the maintenance of psychological disorders like depression and PTSD. As such, the identification of drugs that modulate AM specificity may open up new avenues of research on pharmacological modeling and treatment of psychological disorders.

Aim

The current review summarizes randomized, placebo-controlled studies of acute pharmacological modulation of AM specificity.

Method

A systematic search was conducted of studies that examined the acute effects of pharmacological interventions on AM specificity in human volunteers (healthy and clinical participants) measured using the Autobiographical Memory Test.

Results

Seventeen studies were identified (986 total participants), of which 16 were judged to have low risk of bias. The presence and direction of effects varied across drugs and diagnostic status of participants (clinical vs. healthy volunteers). The most commonly studied drug-hydrocortisone-produced an overall impairment in AM specificity in healthy volunteers [g = -0.28, CI (-0.53, -0.03), p = 0.03], although improvements were reported in two studies of clinical participants. In general, studies of monoamine modulators reported no effect on specificity.

Conclusion

Pharmacological enhancement of AM specificity is inconsistent, although monaminergic modulators show little promise in this regard. Drugs that reduce AM specificity in healthy volunteers may be useful experimental-pharmacological tools that mimic an important transdiagnostic impairment in psychological disorders.

Systematic review registration

PROSPERO, identifier CRD42020199076, https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?ID=CRD42020199076.

Gender-related association among childhood maltreatment, brain structure and clinical features in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) and exposure to childhood maltreatment (CM), which is present at high rates in BD, are both associated with hippocampus and prefrontal cortex structural alterations thought to contribute to clinical features. Gender-related differences are implicated in BD for CM exposure, brain structure and clinical features. However, relationships among these factors in BD are understudied. This study aimed to investigate associations among gender, CM, hippocampus and prefrontal gray matter structure and clinical features in BD. Childhood trauma questionnaire, structured clinical assessments and 3 Tesla structural magnetic resonance imaging were obtained for 236 adults (18-63 years, 32.0 ± 12.6): 119 with BD (58.8% women) and 117 healthy controls (HCs, 50.4% women). Women with BD reported higher CM severity than men with BD and HCs (B=-14.34, 95% confidence intervals (CI)[-22.71,-5.97], p<.001). CM and gender showed a significant interaction for left hippocampus (B=-7.41, 95% CI[-14.10,-0.71], p<.05); CM severity was negatively associated with left hippocampus only in women with BD. In women with BD, CM was associated with post-traumatic stress disorder comorbidity (B = 25.68, 95% CI[15.11,36.25], p<.001). In men with BD, CM severity was associated with lower left frontal pole (B=-0.71, 95% CI[-1.14,-0.28], p<.05) and right superior frontal (B=-17.78, 95% CI[-30.66,-4.90], p<.05) surface area; the latter related to earlier age of first mood symptoms (B = 33.97, 95% CI[7.61, 60.33], p<.05). Findings support gender-related effects of CM on frontotemporal structure and clinical features of BD. The findings bring novel perspectives for gendered pathophysiological models of effects of CM in BD.

Social thinning and stress generation after childhood maltreatment: a neurocognitive social transactional model of psychiatric vulnerability

Childhood maltreatment is associated with significant, enduring risk of psychiatric disorder. In this paper, we review how neurocognitive alterations after maltreatment might indirectly increase the risk of psychiatric disorder via their impact on social functioning. We propose a neurocognitive social transactional model, within which the neurocognitive sequelae of maltreatment are postulated to affect how an individual's social architecture is constructed across development, including the quality and quantity of relationships in an individual's social network. We review extant evidence in two areas in relation to maltreatment: stress generation (a process by which individuals are more likely to experience interpersonal stressor events) and social thinning (an attenuation in the number and quality of relationships over time). We consider how neurocognitive alterations could contribute to these interactive and autocatalytic social processes, which gradually impoverish an individual's actual or potential social environment and ultimately increase psychiatric risk. We conclude by considering the implications of this neurocognitive social transactional model for the prevention of psychiatric disorder after childhood maltreatment.

Child maltreatment, anxiety and depression, and asthma among British adults in the UK Biobank

BACKGROUND

Child maltreatment is associated with asthma in adults. We examined whether lifetime major depressive disorder (MDD) or lifetime generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) mediate an association between child maltreatment and current asthma among 81 105 British adults in the UK Biobank who completed a mental health survey and had complete data on child maltreatment, GAD, MDD, asthma and relevant covariates but no diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

METHODS

Child maltreatment was ascertained based on answers to the five questions in the Childhood Trauma Screener. Two mediators, lifetime MDD and GAD, were assessed based on the Composite International Diagnostic Interview Short Form. Current asthma was defined as physician-diagnosed asthma and wheeze or whistling in the chest in the previous year. Logistic regression was used for the multivariable analysis of child maltreatment and current asthma, and a mediation analysis was conducted to estimate the contributions of lifetime MDD and lifetime GAD to the child maltreatment-current asthma association.

RESULTS

In a multivariable analysis, any child maltreatment was associated with asthma (adjusted OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.15-1.28; p<0.01). In a mediation analysis adjusted for household income, educational attainment, smoking status, pack-years of smoking and other covariates, lifetime GAD and lifetime MDD explained 21.8% and 32.5%, respectively, of the child maltreatment-current asthma association. Similar results were obtained after excluding current smokers and former smokers with ≥10 pack-years of smoking from the mediation analysis.

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that GAD and MDD mediate an association between child maltreatment and asthma in adults, independently of smoking.

Sluggish retrieval of positive memories in depressed adults

Although depression is associated with poor memory for positive material, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We used the Hierarchical Drift Diffusion Model (HDDM) to determine whether slow evidence accumulation at retrieval contributes to depressed individuals' difficulty remembering positive events. Participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory-II and were stratified into High BDI (HBDI; BDI-II > 20, n = 49) and Low BDI (LBDI; BDI-II < 6, n = 46) groups. Next, participants completed an oddball task in which neutral, negative, and positive pictures served as rare targets. One day later, recognition memory was tested by presenting the encoded ("old") pictures along with closely matched ("new") lures. Recognition accuracy was analyzed with a generalized linear model, and choice and response time data were analyzed with the HDDM. Recognition accuracy for old positive pictures was lower in HBDI versus LBDI participants, and the HDDM highlighted slow evidence accumulation during positive memory retrieval in the HBDI group. Impaired memory for positive material in depressed adults was related to slow evidence accumulation at retrieval. Because oddballs should elicit prediction errors that normally strengthen memory formation, these retrieval findings may reflect weak positive prediction errors, at encoding, in depressed adults.

Association between WeChat Use and Memory Performance among Older Adults in China: The Mediating Role of Depression

Changes to memory performance in the course of aging may be influenced by behavioral factors. The use of social media among elderly people is increasing, but studying its effect on cognitive functions such as memory remains at an early stage of development. Meanwhile, the linking mechanisms underlying the association between social media use and memory performance, if any exist, have not been revealed. This study attempted to examine the association between the use of WeChat, the most popular social media platform in China, and memory performance among older people, and to test the possible mediating role of depression underlying this association. Data were drawn from the five-wave survey of the China Family Panel Study (CFPS), and 4929 respondents aged 60 or older (mean age = 68.19, SD = 5.84, 48.2% females) were included. Based on the descriptive statistics, the chi-squared test, Student’s t-test, correlation analysis, and mediation analysis were conducted. The results indicated that the usage rate of WeChat among the sample was 20.1%. After controlling for demographic variables, the use of WeChat was related to higher levels of memory performance and lower levels of depression. Moreover, depression partially mediated the relationship between WeChat use and memory performance. To maintain memory performance and promote cognitive health in the course of aging, using social media and alleviating depression merit special attention.

Feasibility and utility of amygdala neurofeedback

Amygdala NeuroFeedback (NF) have the potential of being a valuable non-invasive intervention tool in many psychiatric disporders. However, the feasibility and best practices of this method have not been systematically examined. The current article presents a review of amygdala-NF studies, an analytic summary of study design parameters, and examination of brain mechanisms related to successful amygdala-NF performance. A meta-analysis of 33 publications showed that real amygdala-NF facilitates learned modulation compared to control conditions. In addition, while variability in study dsign parameters is high, these design choices are implicitly organized by the targeted valence domain (positive or negative). However, in most cases the neuro-behavioral effects of targeting such domains were not directly assessed. Lastly, re-analyzing six data sets of amygdala-fMRI-NF revealed that successful amygdala down-modulation is coupled with deactivation of the posterior insula and nodes in the Default-Mode-Network. Our findings suggest that amygdala self-modulation can be acquired using NF. Yet, additional controlled studies, relevant behavioral tasks before and after NF intervention, and neural 'target engagement' measures are critically needed to establish efficacy and specificity. In addition, the fMRI analysis presented here suggest that common accounts regarding the brain network involved in amygdala NF might reflect unsuccessful modulation attempts rather than successful modulation.

Event Time Perspective in Adaptation to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Preliminary Insights from Two Chinese Samples

Little is known about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the way people construct their time perspective (TP). This study investigated past and future TP in Hubei, China, comparing a ‘pre-pandemic’ sample collected before the pandemic (late 2019, n = 138) to a ‘habitual-pandemic’ sample collected when the pandemic was largely under control (beginning 2021, n = 109). Using the time line paradigm, participants generated significant past and future personal events indicating dates, emotional valence, and intensity for each. We used these data to test the predictions that the COVID-19 pandemic would shorten TP and evoke pessimism for the future and disappointment for the past. Counter to these predictions, we found: (a) typical levels of positivity in both samples for both past and future events; (b) a higher proportion of positive memories in the habitual-pandemic sample than pre-pandemic one; (c) past and future time extension in the habitual-pandemic sample; and (d) the future was more often completed with one’s own ‘peaceful death’ in the habitual-pandemic sample. To determine whether the ‘peaceful death’ phenomenon is adaptive or maladaptive we examined its coincidence with other timeline characteristics. The analyses indicated that the ‘peaceful death’ phenomenon in both samples was associated with a moderately positive TP and a plurality of prospects with frequent references to travel. These results allow to propose that an elongated TP and a distant ‘peaceful death’ may buffer pandemic-related uncertainty and that an accelerated TP functions in the service of self-continuity and well-being.

Age-Varying Associations between Child Maltreatment, Depressive Symptoms, and Frequent Heavy Episodic Drinking

Child maltreatment represents a prevalent public health issue that has been shown to predict both adolescent and young adult depressive symptoms and heavy episodic drinking; however, little is known regarding how associations between specific types of maltreatment (e.g., physical abuse, sexual abuse, care neglect, supervisory neglect) and depressive symptoms and heavy episodic drinking change across adolescence and into young adulthood. Similarly, there is lack of research that has examined how an accumulation of child maltreatment types relates to depressive symptoms and heavy episodic drinking across ages. Time-varying effect models-a statistical approach that allows researchers to pinpoint specific ages where the association between two variables is strongest-were used in the current study to address these gaps. Nationally representative data came from the first four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; N = 16,053; 49.4% female; 51.0% European American/White, 21.0% African American, 10.2% Biracial, 9.1% Hispanic; MAGE W1 = 17.00). Results suggested that certain types of maltreatment are more predictive of negative outcomes than others and that different types of maltreatment confer greater risk in different developmental periods. In addition, while victims of between one and three types of maltreatment had comparable prevalence of depressive symptoms and heavy episodic drinking across adolescence and young adulthood, victims of four types of maltreatment had a much higher prevalence of these outcomes indicating the extreme risk that accompanies an accumulation of maltreatment.

Remembering past challenges to feel better today: Role of neural dedifferentiation and autobiographical integration in late-life reappraisal

Socioemotional theories suggest that surviving a lifetime of life experiences enhances older adult emotional resilience, yet the role of past emotional challenges in current models of emotion regulation is overlooked. In this paper, we propose how integration of memories and hippocampal dedifferentiation may together benefit the reappraisal of novel stressors across the lifespan. First, we review mood benefits of generating positive narratives, and more integrated memories of adverse life events with age. Second, we review neural mechanisms of narrative integration and meaning-making. We propose a framework in which narrative integration and neural dedifferentiation of hippocampal memory representations may facilitate late-life reappraisal via shared positive meaning-making in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). While current evidence supporting this model is limited, we conclude by discussing future directions for testing its components in multivariate neuroimaging studies, and briefly review clinical implications of the proposed model.

Association between childhood maltreatment and the clinical course of bipolar disorders: A survival analysis of mood recurrences

OBJECTIVES

Childhood maltreatment, also referred as childhood trauma, increases the severity of bipolar disorders (BD). Childhood maltreatment has been associated with more frequent mood recurrences, however, mostly in retrospective studies. Since scarce, further prospective studies are required to identify whether childhood maltreatment may be associated with the time to recurrence in BD.

METHODS

Individuals with BD (N = 2008) were assessed clinically and for childhood maltreatment at baseline, and followed up for two years. The cumulative probability of mood recurrence over time was estimated with the Turnbull's extension of the Kaplan-Meier analysis for interval-censored data, including childhood maltreatment as a whole, and then maltreatment subtypes as predictors. Analyses were adjusted for potential confounding factors.

RESULTS

The median duration of follow-up was 22.3 months (IQR:12.0-24.8). Univariable analyses showed associations between childhood maltreatment, in particular all types of abuses (emotional, physical, and sexual) or emotional neglect, and a shorter time to recurrence (all p < 0.001). When including potential confounders into the multivariable models, the time to mood recurrence was associated with multiple/severe childhood maltreatment (i.e., total score above the 75th percentile) (HR = 1.32 95%CI (1.11-1.57), p = 0.002), and more specifically with moderate/severe physical abuse (HR = 1.44 95%CI(1.21-1.73), p < 0.0001). Living alone, lifetime anxiety disorders, lifetime number of mood episodes, baseline depressive and (hypo)manic symptoms, and baseline use of atypical antipsychotics were also associated with the time to recurrence.

CONCLUSIONS

In addition to typical predictors of mood recurrences, an exposure to multiple/severe forms of childhood maltreatment, and more specifically to moderate to severe physical abuse, may increase the risk for a mood recurrence in BD. This leads to the recommendations of more scrutiny and denser follow-up of the individuals having been exposed to such early-life stressors.

The passive recipient: Neural correlates of negative self-view in depression

INTRODCTION

Previous studies have argued that people tend to isolate themselves from negative information. This tendency is modulated by the individual's role in social interaction, that is, as an initiative actor (e.g., "I hit Tom") or a passive recipient (e.g., "Paul hits me"). Depressed patients tend to focus on negative aspects of themselves and cope with situations passively. It is still an open question how the actor/recipient role affects the behavioral and neural responses to self in depression.

METHODS

The present study adopted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to investigate behavioral and neural responses to self (as an actor/recipient) in depressed patients and the matched healthy controls when attributing negative events.

RESULTS

Compared with healthy controls, depressed patients showed more self-attribution for negative events. Depressed patients showed increased brain activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) subsystem of the default mode network (DMN) when they played recipient role in self-related negative events. Activity of the dmPFC subsystem was negatively correlated with depressed patients' self-attribution for negative events in recipient condition. While decreased brain activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem was observed in depressed patients when they played the actor or recipient role in self-related negative events. Activity of the MTL subsystem was negatively correlated with depressed patients' reaction time when they played recipient role in selfrelated negative events.

CONCLUSION

These results implicated that depressed patients manifested the negative self-view. Actor/recipient role affected their activation patterns in the DMN which were different from the healthy controls. The correlation between the abnormal brain activations of the DMN and the behavioral performances might manifest more easily when depressed patients played recipient role in negative events.

A Data-Driven Clustering Method for Discovering Profiles in the Dynamics of Major Depressive Disorder Using a Smartphone-Based Ecological Momentary Assessment of Mood

BACKGROUND

Although major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by a pervasive negative mood, research indicates that the mood of depressed patients is rarely entirely stagnant. It is often dynamic, distinguished by highs and lows, and it is highly responsive to external and internal regulatory processes. Mood dynamics can be defined as a combination of mood variability (the magnitude of the mood changes) and emotional inertia (the speed of mood shifts). The purpose of this study is to explore various distinctive profiles in real-time monitored mood dynamics among MDD patients in routine mental healthcare.

METHODS

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data were collected as part of the cross-European E-COMPARED trial, in which approximately half of the patients were randomly assigned to receive the blended Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (bCBT). In this study a subsample of the bCBT group was included (n = 287). As part of bCBT, patients were prompted to rate their current mood (on a 1-10 scale) using a smartphone-based EMA application. During the first week of treatment, the patients were prompted to rate their mood on three separate occasions during the day. Latent profile analyses were subsequently applied to identify distinct profiles based on average mood, mood variability, and emotional inertia across the monitoring period.

RESULTS

Overall, four profiles were identified, which we labeled as: (1) "very negative and least variable mood" (n = 14) (2) "negative and moderate variable mood" (n = 204), (3) "positive and moderate variable mood" (n = 41), and (4) "negative and highest variable mood" (n = 28). The degree of emotional inertia was virtually identical across the profiles.

CONCLUSIONS

The real-time monitoring conducted in the present study provides some preliminary indications of different patterns of both average mood and mood variability among MDD patients in treatment in mental health settings. Such varying patterns were not found for emotional inertia.

Curiosity helps: Growth in need for cognition bidirectionally predicts future reduction in anxiety and depression symptoms across 10 years

INTRODUCTION

Decreased motivational tendency to seek out, engage in, and enjoy investing in complex cognitive processes in a sustained manner (need for cognition; NFC) may be a predictor and consequence of heightened anxiety and depression symptoms (ADS). However, the majority of investigations on this topic have been cross-sectional, which hinders causal inferences.

METHODS

The current study thus determined the within-person relations between NFC and ADS by using random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) and bivariate dual latent change score (BLCS) approaches to separate between- and within-person effects. RI-CLPM and BLCS also present with advantages of adjusting for regression to the mean, baseline scores, autoregressive and lagged effects, and minimizing measurement error. Community-dwelling adults (n = 6750) completed the Mental Health Inventory-5 and trait-level NFC scales approximately every one year across 10 years.

RESULTS

RI-CLPM showed that within persons, lower level of NFC predicted higher future level of ADS, and vice versa (d = -0.852 to -0.498). Likewise, BLCS demonstrated that within persons, smaller change in NFC forecasted larger subsequent increase in ADS, and conversely (d = -0.631 to -0.519). Findings remained after adjusting for socio-demographic covariates.

CONCLUSION

Consistent with theories, findings suggested that the within-person level-to-future level and change-to-future change relations among NFC and ADS were bi-directional and negative, with moderate-to-large effect sizes. Targeting NFC may treat or prevent the emergence of depression and anxiety disorders. Such efforts may include augmenting or personalizing evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapeutic strategies for individuals with or at-risk for heightened ADS.

Win, lose, or draw: Examining salience, reward memory, and depression with the reward positivity

The reward positivity (RewP) is a putative biomarker of depression. Careful control of stimulus properties and manipulation of both stimulus valence and salience could facilitate interpretation of the RewP. RewP interpretation could further be improved by investigating functional outcomes of a blunted RewP in depression, such as reduced memory for rewarding outcomes. This study sought to advance RewP interpretation first by advancing task design through use of neutral (i.e., draw) control trials and counterbalanced feedback stimuli. Second, we examined the RewP's association with memory and the impact of depression. Undergraduates completed self-report measures of depression and anhedonia prior to a modified doors task in which words were displayed in colored fonts that indicated win, loss, or draw feedback. Memory of the feedback associated with each word (i.e., source memory) was tested. Results showed that RewP response to wins was more positive than to losses, which was more positive than to draws. The RewP was not associated with depression or anhedonia. The low depression group showed a source memory advantage for win words, but the high depression group did not. Source memory showed small relations to the RewP, but these did not survive Bonferroni correction. Results suggest the RewP is sensitive to salience and highlight challenges in detecting an association between the RewP and depression in modified doors tasks. Findings indicate that depression is related to dysfunctional source memory for reward but not loss and that future research should probe the possible associations between the RewP and memory in depression.

Exposure to childhood trauma increases risk of opioid use disorder among people prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain

BACKGROUND

Little is known about childhood trauma exposure and Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) among people prescribed opioids for chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP). We aimed to (1) describe childhood trauma exposure among this population, and (2) examine if childhood trauma exposure was an independent risk factor for OUD among people prescribed opioids for CNCP.

METHODS

This study used baseline data from 1514 people prescribed opioids for CNCP in Australia. We used latent class analysis to characterise participants by five indicators of childhood trauma exposure and logistic regression to characterise class membership. We used discrete-time survival analysis to determine whether there was an independent association between childhood trauma exposure and risk of OUD according to adjusted odds ratios (AOR).

RESULTS

We identified three classes of childhood trauma exposure: (1) 'low exposure' (n = 765; 54.0%), (2) 'emotional & sexual abuse' (n = 324; 22.9%), and (3) 'high all' (n = 329; 23.2%). 'Emotional & sexual abuse' or 'high all' childhood trauma exposure class membership was associated with higher rates of pain difficulties, mental disorders, and substance use disorders, compared to 'low exposure' class membership. After we adjusted for previously identified OUD risk factors, participants in the 'emotional & sexual abuse' (AOR 1.51; 95%CI 1.09-2.12; p = 0.016) and 'high all' (AOR 1.77; 95%CI 1.28-2.45; p = 0.001) childhood trauma exposure classes were at increased risk of OUD.

CONCLUSIONS

Among people prescribed opioids for CNCP, childhood trauma exposure was a common, independent risk factor for OUD. Availability of trauma-informed services for those prescribed opioids for CNCP may reduce risk of transition to OUD.

Development of Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory in Offspring of Depressed Mothers

Maternal depression increases the risk for offspring cognitive vulnerabilities, which may be a mechanism underlying the intergenerational transmission of depression. Little is known about how cognitive vulnerabilities, particularly memory biases, develop in the offspring of depressed mothers. Understanding the etiology of memory biases may lead to novel intervention targets. Therefore, the current study examined the prospective impact of maternal depression on the development of offspring overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM; i.e., the tendency to recall less specific memories), a cognitive vulnerability implicated in the intergenerational transmission of depression. Participants were offspring (ages 8-14; 51% daughters, 81% Caucasian) of mothers with (n= 129) or without (n= 122) a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) during the offspring's life. Mothers and offspring completed assessments every 6 months for 2 years. Compared to offspring of never-depressed mothers, offspring of mothers with a history of MDD recalled less specific memories in response to negative, but not positive, cue words at the initial assessment, and this bias was maintained across the 2-year follow-up. For offspring of depressed, but not never-depressed, mothers, higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms at a given assessment predicted prospective decreases in the children's autobiographical memory specificity. Again, this finding was specific to negative, but not positive, cue words. These results suggest that maternal depression has both short- and long-term effects on the development of offspring OGM to negative cues, which may represent a malleable cognitive vulnerability for the intergenerational transmission of MDD that could be targeted for intervention.

Violent experiences and neighbourhoods during adolescence: understanding and mitigating the association with mental health at the transition to adulthood in a longitudinal cohort study

PURPOSE

Violence occurs at multiple ecological levels and can harm mental health. However, studies of adolescents' experience of violence have often ignored the community context of violence, and vice versa. We examined how personal experience of severe physical violence and living in areas with high levels of neighbourhood disorder during adolescence combine to associate with mental health at the transition to adulthood and which factors mitigate this.

METHOD

Data were from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of 2232 British twins. Participants' experience of severe physical violence during adolescence and past-year symptoms of psychiatric disorder were assessed via interviews at age 18. Neighbourhood disorder was reported by residents when participants were aged 13-14. Potential protective factors of maternal warmth, sibling warmth, IQ, and family socio-economic status were assessed during childhood, and perceived social support at age 18.

RESULTS

Personal experience of severe physical violence during adolescence was associated with elevated odds of age-18 psychiatric disorder regardless of neighbourhood disorder exposure. Cumulative effects of exposure to both were evident for internalising and thought disorder, but not externalising disorder. For adolescents exposed to severe physical violence only, higher levels of perceived social support (including from family and friends) were associated with lower odds of psychiatric disorder. For those who also lived in areas with high neighbourhood disorder, only family support mitigated their risk.

CONCLUSION

Increasing support or boosting adolescents' perceptions of their existing support network may be effective in promoting their mental health following violence exposure.

Reduced specificity and increased overgenerality of autobiographical memory persist as cognitive vulnerabilities in remitted major depression: A meta-analysis

Difficulty in accessing specific memories, referred to as reduced memory specificity or overgeneral memory (OGM), has been established as a marker of clinical depression. However, it is not clear if this deficit persists following the remission of depressive episodes. The current study involved a systematic review and meta-analysis of empirical studies with the aim of establishing whether remitted depression was associated with retrieving fewer specific and more overgeneral autobiographical memories. Seventeen studies were identified as eligible. The results indicated that people with remitted depression recalled fewer specific memories (k = 15; g = -0.314, 95% CI [-0.543; -0.085], z = -2.69, p = .007) and more categoric memories (k = 9; g = 0.254, 95% CI [0.007; 0.501], z = 2.02, p = .043) compared to people who had never been depressed. Given these deficits have elsewhere been shown to be prognostic of future depressive symptoms, these findings suggest that reduced memory specificity/overgeneral memory persists following remission and may be a risk factor for future episodes of depression in those that are in remission. The findings are discussed in terms of how this knowledge might influence clinical understanding of relapse prevention and maintenance of remission in those with a history of depression.

Psychological Treatments for Anhedonia

Anhedonia, a loss of interest or pleasure in activities, is a transdiagnostic symptom that characterizes many individuals suffering from depression and anxiety. Most psychological interventions are designed to decrease negative affect rather than increase positive affect, and are largely ineffective for reducing anhedonia. More recently, affective neuroscience has been leveraged to inform treatments for anhedonia by targeting aspects of the Positive Valence Systems, including impairments in reward anticipation, reward responsiveness, and reward learning. In this chapter, we review the efficacy of treatments and, when possible, highlight links to reward constructs. Augmented behavioral approaches and targeted cognitive interventions designed to target reward anticipation, responsiveness, and learning show preliminary efficacy in reducing anhedonia, while there is a relative lack of treatments that target positive emotion regulation and reward devaluation. In addition to developing treatments that address these targets, the field will benefit from establishing standardized measurement of anhedonia across units of analysis, mapping mechanisms of change onto aspects of reward processing, and examining anhedonia outcomes in the long-term.