PT704. Childhood environment effects on episodic memory brain function
Year: 2016
Type: conference-abstract
Abstract: Background: Urban childhood environments may be related to neuropsychiatric disorders. In this China-US collaborative study, we aimed to explore the underlying mechanisms of gene and childhood environment effects on brain function and neuropsychiatric risk. This leverages on dramatic urbanization and rural-urban migration since the 1980s in China. Here, we examined episodic memory encoding and retrieval of aversive and neutral pictures in individuals with different rural-urban childhoods. Methods: e examined subjects who were currently living in urban cities and have similar gender, education and current social economic status, but have had different urban or rural childhoods. In particular, we studied subjects who moved to cities from rural areas after age 18 (117 subjects) and those who have always lived in cities (90 subjects). In the episodic memory paradigm scanned in a 3T GE MRI, subjects rated whether blocks of neutral or aversive International Affective Pictures were indoors or outdoors in the encoding session, and whether the pictures have been seen before in the retrieval session. Data were analyzed in Statistical Parametric Mapping 12. Results: Both subject groups had similar demographic and behavioral results. In the encoding and retrieval tasks, subjects revealed stronger activation when processing aversive relative to neutral pictures in hippocampus, amygdala, putamen and cortex. (p<0.001, uncorrected). Rural childhoods was associated with relatively increased activation in neutral and aversive conditions at hippocampus, amygdala, and frontal cortex in encoding and retrieval. These effects were accentuated in the aversive minus neutral contrast during encoding. Discussion: Childhoods in rural and urban environments appear associated with physiological differences in the neural processing of picture scenes. The childhood environment effects were accentuated in the encoding of aversive pictures at the hippocampus, amygdala and frontal cortex. These may relate to differing neuropsychiatric vulnerabilities of rural and urban childhoods.
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,693
OpenAlex ID: W2808272629