Socio-cognitive and Biological Responses to Maltreatment

Although the contribution of childhood maltreatment (CM) to psychological (e.g. social cognition) and biological (e.g. neural, biomolecular) outcomes has been extensively studied, e.g. in schizophrenia and autism, its contribution to bipolar disorder (BD) and the role of different CM subtypes, multiplicity and timing remains unclear. The aim of the project is to investigate how a history of emotional CM is associated with multidimensional aspects of social cognitive, neural and biomolecular parameters. The research questions addressed in this project are: i) How is a history of emotional CM associated with social cognition in control participants (CP) with no known psychiatric illness and in individuals diagnosed with BD? ii) How is a history of emotional CM related to biomolecular and neural parameters in CP and individuals diagnosed with BD? iii) How are biomolecular markers, neural parameters, and social cognitive skills related in individuals with a history of emotional CM? The primary aim of this study is to investigate the association of self-reported history of emotional CM with social cognition (i.e. emotion recognition, cognitive and affective empathy) in CP and in individuals diagnosed with BD, both with and without a history of CM. Additional aims are to characterize the association of history of emotional CM with neural (i.e. task-based and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI), morphometry, white matter) MRI parameters and biomolecular markers (i.e. telomere length, mitochondrial bioenergetics and biogenesis) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and blood plasma (selected immune-response mediators). Recruitment, clinical assessments (e.g. Maltreatment and Abuse Chronology of Exposure scale) and blood sampling of 80 CP and 80 individuals diagnosed with BD with and without a history of CM will be performed at two timepoints at the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Medical Psychology, Medical University of Innsbruck (MUI). Longitudinal MRI acquisitions will be performed at the Neuroimaging Core Facility (MUI). Clinical, MRI and biomolecular analyses will be applied, and correlations of these findings with emotional CM, multiplicity and timing will be evaluated. The contribution of a history of emotional CM to psychological and biological outcomes in BD is unknown. This study will clarify the association between emotional CM and social cognition in BD and CP. It will study how emotional CM alters brain function and structure in regions related to social cognition. A translational approach combining MR neuroimaging with psychoneuroimmunological methods will assess neural parameters together with biomolecular markers from whole blood in relation to emotional CM and social cognition.