Tracing the Echoes of Childhood Adversity: Maladaptive Schemas in Memory Bias and Brain Functional Organization

The impact of childhood adversity is not limited to childhood; rather, it leads to long-lasting consequences for people’s mental health. To develop more effective interventions, it is important to understand how childhood adversity alters the brain and behaviour. To this end, the thesis traced “echoes” of childhood adversity in an emotional memory task. Advantages in remembering negative events over positive ones are commonly observed in people with depression. Results from our study showed that even for individuals who are not currently in a depressive mood, higher levels of childhood adversity were associated with a greater advantage in remembering negative over positive information. This negative bias was also seen in the activity of brain areas closely involved in emotional memory processing. Beyond the memory study, we also traced childhood adversity in the functional communication between brain regions. The results showed that a specific type of childhood adversity—emotional neglect was linked to stress-related changes in how the striatum, a key part of the reward processing system, communicates with other regions. These findings provide new insights into brain and cognitive changes related to childhood adversity, contributing to a better understanding of its roles in mental health problems.