Gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment lack replicability in a multi-cohort brain-wide association study

作者：Janik Goltermann, Nils Ralf Winter, Susanne L. Meinert, Dominik Grotegerd, Anna Kraus, Kira Flinkenflügel, Luisa Altegoer, Judith Krieger, Elisabeth Johanna Leehr, Joscha Böhnlein, Linda M. Bonnekoh, Maike Frederike Richter, Tim Hahn, L. Fisch, Marius Gruber, Marco Hermesdorf, Klaus Berger, Volker Arolt, Katharina Brosch, Frederike Stein, Florian Thomas‐Odenthal, Paula Usemann, Lea Teutenberg, Vincent Hammes, Hamidreza Jamalabadi, Nina Alexander, Benjamin Straube, Andreas Jansen, Igor Nenadić, Tilo T. J. Kircher, Nils Opel, Udo Dannlowski · 发表于：Nature Communications · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41467-025-62374-w · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Child Abuse and Trauma、Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development、Early Childhood Education and Development

Abstract Childhood maltreatment effects on cerebral gray matter have been frequently discussed as a neurobiological pathway for depression. However, localizations are highly heterogeneous, and recent reports have questioned the replicability of mental health neuroimaging findings. Here, we investigate the replicability of gray matter correlates of maltreatment, measured retrospectively via the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, across three large adult cohorts (total N = 3225). Pooling cohorts yields maltreatment-related gray matter reductions, with most extensive effects when not controlling for depression diagnosis (maximum partial R 2 = .022). However, none of these effects significantly replicate across cohorts. Non-replicability is consistent across a variety of maltreatment subtypes and operationalizations, as well as subgroup analyses with and without depression, and stratified by sex. Results are furthermore consistent across a variety of gray matter operationalizations, including voxel-based morphometry and parcellation-based cortical and subcortical measures. In this work, we show that there is little evidence for the replicability of gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment, when adequately controlling for psychopathology. This underscores the need to focus on replicability research in mental health neuroimaging.