title: Amygdala activation in maltreated children during pre-attentive emotional processing.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Childhood adversity is associated with significantly increased risk of psychiatric disorder. To date, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of children have mainly focused on institutionalisation and investigated conscious processing of affect.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To investigate neural response to pre-attentively presented affect cues in a community sample of children with documented experiences of maltreatment in the home.
  
  
  METHODS
  A masked dot-probe paradigm involving pre-attentive presentation of angry, happy and neutral facial expressions was employed. Eighteen maltreated children were compared with 23 carefully matched non-maltreated peers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Increased neural response was observed in the right amygdala for pre-attentively presented angry and happy faces in maltreated v. non-maltreated children. Level of amygdala activation was negatively associated with age at onset for several abuse subtypes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Maltreatment is associated with heightened neural response to positive and negative facial affect, even to stimuli outside awareness. This may represent a latent neural risk factor for future psychiatric disorder.
authors.affiliation: Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London and The Anna Freud Centre, London, UK. e.mccrory@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Eamon J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: McCrory
authors.forename: Stéphane A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: De Brito
authors.forename: Philip A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Kelly
authors.forename: Geoffrey
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bird
authors.forename: Catherine L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Sebastian
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mechelli
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Samuel
authors.forename: Essi
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Viding
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology