A multivariate twin study of hippocampal volume, self-esteem and well-being in middle-aged men

Hippocampus links perceived social support with self-esteem

Self-esteem is an important psychological resource with adaptive values, and numerous investigations have revealed that self-esteem is influenced by perceived social support. However, the potential neural basis linking perceived social support with self-esteem remains unclear. Therefore, we used voxel-based morphometry to explore whether the hippocampus and amygdala function as the neuroanatomical basis linking perceived social support with self-esteem in a cohort of 243 young healthy adults (128 women; mean age 22.64 years, standard deviation 1.01 years). The Social Provisions Scale and Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale were used for the survey. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure the gray matter volume of the hippocampus and amygdala. Correlation analysis revealed that those who perceived more social support had higher self-esteem. Notably, mediation analysis showed that hippocampal gray matter volume linked perceived social support with self-esteem. Our study suggests that the hippocampus plays a primary, but not exclusive, role in linking perceived social support with self-esteem, which provides a novel explanation for how perceived social support affects self-esteem from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.

Brain conditions mediate the association between aging and happiness

As the population ages, the realization of a long and happy life is becoming an increasingly important issue in many societies. Therefore, it is important to clarify how happiness and the brain change with aging. In this study, which was conducted with 417 healthy adults in Japan, the analysis showed that fractional anisotropy (FA) correlated with happiness, especially in the internal capsule, corona radiata, posterior thalamic radiation, cingulum, and superior longitudinal fasciculus. According to previous neuroscience studies, these regions are involved in emotional regulation. In psychological studies, emotional regulation has been associated with improvement in happiness. Therefore, this study is the first to show that FA mediates the relationship between age and subjective happiness in a way that bridges these different fields.

Prospective Associations of Leisure-Time Physical Activity With Psychological Distress and Well-Being: A 12-Year Cohort Study

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate the associations of leisure-time physical activity with psychological distress and well-being, and potential mediators.

METHODS

We used data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (n = 5197; 2688 men), including waves 34y (2004), 42y (2012), and 46y (2016). Participants reported leisure-time physical activity frequency and intensity (exposure) at age 34 years (baseline); cognition (vocabulary test), body mass index, disability, mobility and pain perception (potential mediators) at age 42 years; and psychological distress (Malaise Inventory) and well-being (Warwick-Edinburgh scale) at age 46 years. Baseline confounders included sex, country, education, employment status, alcohol use, tobacco smoking, and psychological distress. Main analyses included logistic regression and mediation models.

RESULTS

Higher leisure-time physical activity intensity at baseline was associated with lower psychological distress at 46y (β = -0.038 [95% confidence interval {CI} =-0.069 to -0.007]), but not leisure-time physical activity frequency. Baseline leisure-time physical activity frequency and intensity were associated with higher psychological well-being at 46y (frequency: β = 0.089 [95% CI = 0.002 to 0.176]; intensity: β = 0.262 [95% CI = 0.123 to 0.401]); and total: β = 0.041 [95% CI = 0.013 to 0.069]). Only body mass index at 42y partially mediated the association between leisure-time physical activity frequency (15.7%) and total leisure-time physical activity (6.2%) at 34y, with psychological well-being at 46y.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings highlight the role of leisure-time physical activity in psychological distress and well-being, with greater effect sizes associated with higher frequency and intensity of leisure-time physical activity. Future interventions should consider examining potential mediators of the association of leisure-time physical activity with psychological well-being, such as body mass index.

Prospective associations of different contexts of physical activity with psychological distress and well-being among middle-aged adults: An analysis of the 1970 British Cohort Study

BACKGROUND

Our aim was to investigate whether different types and social contexts of physical activity (PA) participation are prospectively associated with psychological distress and well-being among middle-aged adults.

METHODS

Data from the 1970 British Cohort Study was used (N = 5144-2733 women). At age 42y, participants reported their type of leisure-time PA, which was classified as individual PA or group PA (exposure). At age 46y, participants reported co-primary outcomes: psychological distress (Malaise Inventory) and well-being (Warwick-Edinburgh scale). Highest academic achievement, employment status, country of interview, baseline values of psychological distress and well-being, smoking, alcohol use, TV-viewing and total physical activity at 42y were used as covariates. Main analyses included linear regression stratifying by sex.

RESULTS

Jogging, cross-country, road-running (both sexes) as well as team sports (men) were associated with higher well-being. Health, fitness, gym or conditioning activities and jogging, cross-country (women), road-running (women) and team sports (men) were associated with lower psychological distress. Participation in both individual and group PA were associated with lower psychological distress and higher well-being for both sexes in crude models. However, adjusted models revealed that only group PA was associated with lower psychological distress (B: -0.106; 95%CI: -0.188 to -0.025) and higher well-being (0.835; 0.050 to 1.619) among men but not women. In the sensitivity analysis, group PA was associated with higher well-being (0.855; 0.094 to 1.616) when compared with individual PA among men. Group PA was not associated with psychological distress among both sexes and well-being among women when compared with individual PA.

CONCLUSION

Group PA was prospectively associated with lower psychological distress and higher well-being among men but not females. Future PA interventions could focus on group activities for males. Further research to understand the relationship between individual/group PA and mental health is required in females.

Device-measured physical activity and sedentary behaviour in relation to mental wellbeing: An analysis of the 1970 British cohort study

Although physical activity and sedentary behaviour have established associations with mental illness, the extent to which they impact on mental wellbeing is not well understood. We examined associations between moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), sitting time (ST) and mental wellbeing in 4526 participants from the 1970 British Cohort Study (UK) in the age 46 survey (2016-18). MVPA and ST were measured using a thigh mounted accelerometer device (activPAL 3 micro) worn continuously for 7 days and participants completed the 14-item Warwick-Edinburg Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) to assess mental wellbeing. In linear regression models MVPA (per hr) was associated with an additional 0.57 points on the WEMWBS (95% CI 0.03-1.12) regardless of gender, wear time, education, socioeconomic status, smoking, body mass index, disability and psychological distress. ST was not associated with WEMWBS in the adjusted models (B = -0.11, -0.23, 0.02). In MVPA stratified analyses, ST showed a linear trend with WEMBS in participants with low levels of MVPA but not in medium and high MVPA categories. In this large, nationally representative cohort, device-measured MVPA showed an association with higher mental wellbeing whilst ST was only associated with reduced mental wellbeing in participants with low levels of MVPA. Our main limitation was the cross-sectional design which precludes any inference of direction of association or causality. Nevertheless, interventions to promote MVPA may be an effective public health policy to promote mental wellbeing. Further investigation of the effect different sitting behaviours has on mental wellbeing is warranted.

From serendipity to clinical relevance: How clinical psychology and neuroscience converged to illuminate psychoneuroendocrinology

Dirk Hellhammer and his colleagues have played a major role in creating the field of psychoneuroendocrinology from their roots in psychology. In this review, using examples from the history of the McEwen laboratory and neuroscience and neuroendocrinology colleagues, I summarize my own perspective as to how the fields of neuroscience and neuroendocrinology have contributed to psychoneuroendocrinology and how they converged with the contributions from Dirk Hellhammer and his colleagues.

Validation of hippocampal biomarkers of cumulative affective experience

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Recent knowledge on hippocampal structural plasticity is reviewed.

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This knowledge is harnessed to develop biomarkers of cumulative experience.

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Hippocampal plasticity is shown to have construct, content and criterion validity in mammals.

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The biomarkers require further validation to be used in birds and fish.

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We discuss some practical considerations to implement the biomarkers.

Progress in improving the welfare of captive animals has been hindered by a lack of objective indicators to assess the quality of lifetime experience, often called cumulative affective experience. Recent developments in stress biology and psychiatry have shed new light on the role of the mammalian hippocampus in affective processes. Here we review these findings and argue that structural hippocampal biomarkers demonstrate criterion, construct and content validity as indicators of cumulative affective experience in mammals. We also briefly review emerging findings in birds and fish, which have promising implications for applying the hippocampal approach to these taxa, but require further validation. We hope that this review will motivate welfare researchers and neuroscientists to explore the potential of hippocampal biomarkers of cumulative affective experience.

The hippocampus underlies the association between self-esteem and physical health

Self-esteem refers to the extent to which we feel positive or negative about ourselves, and reflects an individual's subjective evaluation of personal worth and attitudes about the self. As one kind of positive psychosocial resources, high self-esteem has been found to buffer the effects of stress on physical health. However, little is known about the possible neural basis underlying the association between physical health and self-esteem. In the present study, we investigated whether the hippocampus served as a neuroanatomical basis for the association between self-esteem and physical health in a large population of healthy young adults. We examined self-esteem and self-reported physical health with the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES) and the Chinese Constitution Questionnaire (CCQ) respectively, and gray matter volume of the hippocampus was measured using magnetic resonance imaging. As expected, we found that individuals with higher levels of self-esteem had better self-reported physical health. Importantly, the mediation analysis showed that the gray matter volume of the hippocampus mediated the link between self-esteem and physical health, suggesting its critical role in the neural circuitry through which self-esteem is related to physical health.

Associations between subjective well-being and subcortical brain volumes

To study the underpinnings of individual differences in subjective well-being (SWB), we tested for associations of SWB with subcortical brain volumes in a dataset of 724 twins and siblings. For significant SWB-brain associations we probed for causal pathways using Mendelian Randomization (MR) and estimated genetic and environmental contributions from twin modeling. Another independent measure of genetic correlation was obtained from linkage disequilibrium (LD) score regression on published genome-wide association summary statistics. Our results indicated associations of SWB with hippocampal volumes but not with volumes of the basal ganglia, thalamus, amygdala, or nucleus accumbens. The SWB-hippocampus relations were nonlinear and characterized by lower SWB in subjects with relatively smaller hippocampal volumes compared to subjects with medium and higher hippocampal volumes. MR provided no evidence for an SWB to hippocampal volume or hippocampal volume to SWB pathway. This was in line with twin modeling and LD-score regression results which indicated non-significant genetic correlations. We conclude that low SWB is associated with smaller hippocampal volume, but that genes are not very important in this relationship. Instead other etiological factors, such as exposure to stress and stress hormones, may exert detrimental effects on SWB and the hippocampus to bring about the observed association.

Pathway to neural resilience: Self-esteem buffers against deleterious effects of poverty on the hippocampus

Human neuroimaging studies have shown that people living in poverty tend to suffer hippocampal atrophy, which leads to impaired memory and learning throughout life. However, behavioral studies demonstrate that poor people with high self-esteem are often exempt from the deleterious effect of poverty and instead possess a happy and successful life. Here we investigated whether high self-esteem can buffer against the deleterious effects of poverty, as indicated by low subjective socioeconomic status (SSS), on the hippocampal gray matter volume (GMV) in a large cohort of young participants (N = 280). As expected, findings revealed that although low (vs. high) SSS was linked with a smaller hippocampal GMV, the deleterious effect of low SSS on hippocampal GMV was alleviated when the participants have high self-esteem. Commonality analyses further confirmed this observation. The current study suggests that positive psychological resources such as self-esteem may provide protection for the hippocampal atrophy in adversity. Hum Brain Mapp 37:3757-3766, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Problematic Internet use, well-being, self-esteem and self-control: Data from a high-school survey in China

Given the prevalence of Internet use among youth, there is concern that a subset of Internet-using youth may exhibit problematic or addictive patterns of Internet use. The present study examines the association between problematic Internet use (PIU), demographic variables, and health-related measures among Chinese adolescents. Survey data from 1552 adolescents (male=653, mean age=15.43years) from Jilin Province, China, were collected. According to the Young Diagnostic Questionnaire for Internet Addiction (YDQ), 77.8% (n=1207), 16.8% (n=260), and 5.5% (n=85) showed adaptive, maladaptive, and problematic Internet use, respectively. Multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that gender and family income per month differed between youth showing problematic and adaptive patterns of Internet use. Well-being, self-esteem, and self-control were related to severity of problematic Internet use, with greater severity typically associated with poorer measures in each domain. The findings that severity of problematic Internet use is associated with specific socio-demographic features and temperamental and well-being measures suggest that specific groups of youth may be particularly vulnerable to developing problematic Internet use. Early prevention/intervention programs targeting at-risk groups may help improve public health.

The neural basis of trait self-esteem revealed by the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and resting state functional connectivity

Self-esteem is an affective, self-evaluation of oneself and has a significant effect on mental and behavioral health. Although research has focused on the neural substrates of self-esteem, little is known about the spontaneous brain activity that is associated with trait self-esteem (TSE) during the resting state. In this study, we used the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal of the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFFs) and resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) to identify TSE-related regions and networks. We found that a higher level of TSE was associated with higher ALFFs in the left ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and lower ALFFs in the left cuneus/lingual gyrus and right lingual gyrus. RSFC analyses revealed that the strengths of functional connectivity between the left vmPFC and bilateral hippocampus were positively correlated with TSE; however, the connections between the left vmPFC and right inferior frontal gyrus and posterior superior temporal sulcus were negatively associated with TSE. Furthermore, the strengths of functional connectivity between the left cuneus/lingual gyrus and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex were positively related to TSE. These findings indicate that TSE is linked to core regions in the default mode network and social cognition network, which is involved in self-referential processing, autobiographical memory and social cognition.

Genetics of wellbeing and its components satisfaction with life, happiness, and quality of life: a review and meta-analysis of heritability studies

Wellbeing is a major topic of research across several disciplines, reflecting the increasing recognition of its strong value across major domains in life. Previous twin-family studies have revealed that individual differences in wellbeing are accounted for by both genetic as well as environmental factors. A systematic literature search identified 30 twin-family studies on wellbeing or a related measure such as satisfaction with life or happiness. Review of these studies showed considerable variation in heritability estimates (ranging from 0 to 64 %), which makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding the genetic influences on wellbeing. For overall wellbeing twelve heritability estimates, from 10 independent studies, were meta-analyzed by computing a sample size weighted average heritability. Ten heritability estimates, derived from 9 independent samples, were used for the meta-analysis of satisfaction with life. The weighted average heritability of wellbeing, based on a sample size of 55,974 individuals, was 36 % (34–38), while the weighted average heritability for satisfaction with life was 32 % (29–35) (n = 47,750). With this result a more robust estimate of the relative influence of genetic effects on wellbeing is provided.

Examining gray matter structures associated with individual differences in global life satisfaction in a large sample of young adults

Although much attention has been directed towards life satisfaction that refers to an individual's general cognitive evaluations of his or her life as a whole, little is known about the neural basis underlying global life satisfaction. In this study, we used voxel-based morphometry to investigate the structural neural correlates of life satisfaction in a large sample of young healthy adults (n = 299). We showed that individuals' life satisfaction was positively correlated with the regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), and negatively correlated with the rGMV in the left precuneus and left ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This pattern of results remained significant even after controlling for the effect of general positive and negative affect, suggesting a unique structural correlates of life satisfaction. Furthermore, we found that self-esteem partially mediated the association between the PHG volume and life satisfaction as well as that between the precuneus volume and global life satisfaction. Taken together, we provide the first evidence for the structural neural basis of life satisfaction, and highlight that self-esteem might play a crucial role in cultivating an individual's life satisfaction.