PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Badura-Brack, Amy S.
AU  - Mills, Mackenzie S.
AU  - Embury, Christine M.
AU  - Khanna, Maya M.
AU  - Earl, Alicia Klanecky
AU  - Stephen, Julia M.
AU  - Wang, Yu-Ping
AU  - Calhoun, Vince D.
AU  - Wilson, Tony W.
TI  - Hippocampal and parahippocampal volumes vary by sex and traumatic life events in children
AID  - 10.1503/jpn.190013
DP  - 2020 Jul 01
TA  - Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
PG  - 288--297
VI  - 45
IP  - 4
4099  - http://jpn.ca/content/45/4/288.short
4100  - http://jpn.ca/content/45/4/288.full
SO  - J Psychiatry Neurosci2020 Jul 01; 45
AB  - Background: Childhood trauma is reliably associated with smaller hippocampal volume in adults; however, this finding has not been shown in children, and even less is known about how sex and trauma interact to affect limbic structural development in children.Methods: Typically developing children aged 9 to 15 years who completed a trauma history questionnaire and structural T1-weighted MRI were included in this study (n = 172; 85 female, 87 male). All children who reported 4 or more traumas (n = 36) composed the high trauma group, and all children who reported 3 or fewer traumas (n = 136) composed the low trauma group. Using multivariate analysis of covariance, we compared FreeSurfer-derived structural MRI volumes (normalized by total intracranial volume) of the amygdalar, hippocampal and parahippocampal regions by sex and trauma level, controlling for age and study site.Results: We found a significant sex × trauma interaction, such that girls with high trauma had greater volumes than boys with high trauma. Follow-up analyses indicated significantly increased volumes for girls and generally decreased volumes for boys, specifically in the hippocampal and parahippocampal regions for the high trauma group; we observed no sex differences in the low trauma group. We noted no interaction effect for the amygdalae.Limitations We assessed a community sample and did not include a clinical sample. We did not collect data about the ages at which children experienced trauma.Conclusion: Results revealed that psychological trauma affects brain development differently in girls and boys. These findings need to be followed longitudinally to elucidate how structural differences progress and contribute to well-known sex disparities in psychopathology.