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Child maltreatment can have devasting long-term consequences—can these effects be detected in the brains of children who have been maltreated?

In a 2024 paper, NIH-funded investigators examined the brains of children who experienced maltreatment early in life using neuroimaging. Neuroimaging—techniques that create images of the structure or function of the nervous system—is widely used by researchers in behavioral neuroscience. Neuroimaging analyses can help researchers understand how specific behavioral and environmental factors affect brain structure, neural activity, and patterns of behavior. One novel technique is topological data analysis (TDA).

TDA combines data analysis, computational geometry, statistics, and machine learning to assess the shapes and structures within brain images. Using TDA techniques can provide information on homology—how similar or varied a brain structure is. Greater variance in brain structure and connectivity has been linked to enhanced brain processing ability and adaptivity. TDA could be a powerful tool for investigating differences among groups—such as those exposed to different environments, stressors, or treatments—by studying high-dimensional data to reveal structural patterns that may have been shaped by external factors.

What were the researchers studying and why?

The researchers applied TDA to brain images of children who have been maltreated and compared them to those of children who have not been maltreated to determine whether meaningful differences in brain structures existed between the two groups.  

Child maltreatment is the abuse or neglect of a child, which encompasses all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment and harm. Experiencing childhood maltreatment can cause adverse mental, emotional, and physical outcomes, both short and long term. An estimated 680,000 children experience maltreatment every year in the United States.

Understanding the neurobiological impacts of maltreatment can provide valuable insights for developing treatments or interventions to support affected individuals. Additionally, further validating and improving tools like TDA has the potential to enable more accurate diagnoses in the future and to enhance understanding of the effects of various psychosocial and environmental factors.

How did the researchers conduct this study?

Researchers took magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of the brains of 54 children—23 who had suffered neglect in early life and 31 age-matched comparison children who had not experienced neglect or other maltreatment. Researchers took magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of the brains of 54 children—23 who had suffered periods of neglect when they were between the ages of 3 months and 5.4 years and age-matched comparison children who had not experienced neglect or other maltreatment. At the time of the MRIs, the children ranged in age from 9.5 years to 13 years. The two groups of children did not differ significantly in age, pubertal stage, sex, or socioeconomic status. Researchers focused on the shape, thickness, and volume of white matter—nerve fibers that connect different parts of the brain and help people communicate. They created models to map white matter structural covariance networks and used machine learning to analyze variations in brain topology.

What did the study results show?

The TDA modeling and analysis found that children who experienced neglect had significantly fewer disconnected brain components and more disrupted white matter organization than the comparison group.

These results suggest that brain regions in neglected children may be overly connected or not functioning independently as they typically would. Disrupted white matter indicates the brain’s communication pathways may be less organized, weaker, or damaged, which can affect how well the brain processes information.

These findings reinforce prior research conducted with less sensitive and robust techniques that has shown that neglect in early life may alter how the brain is wired and may lead to differences in cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior.

What is the potential impact of these findings?

This study shows that neglect in early life is associated with—but not necessarily the sole cause of—adverse neurodevelopment. These effects may be tied to conditions that often co-occur with neglect, such as malnutrition.

Using TDA gives researchers a tool to better understand and visualize brain structure, advancing and confirming findings of previous research showing reduced connectivity strength and local connectivity in the brains of children who have been maltreated.

TDA provides exciting possibilities for future research in developmental neuroscience. Larger sample sizes will be critical for developing clinically meaningful diagnostic tools. The NIH-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study℠ offers a valuable opportunity for this work. With nearly 12,000 participants enrolled across the country, the ABCD Study® is a rich resource that researchers can use to apply validated methods like TDA on larger sample sizes.

Citation

Chung, M. K., Azizi, T., Hanson, J. L., Alexander, A. L., Pollak, S. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2024). Altered topological structure of the brain white matter in maltreated children through topological data analysis. Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.), 8(1), 355–376. https://doi.org/10.1162/netn_a_00355