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Testosterone and hippocampal trajectories mediate relationship of poverty to emotion dysregulation and depression.

ABSTRACT: There is robust evidence that early poverty is associated with poor developmental outcomes, including impaired emotion regulation and depression. However, the specific mechanisms that mediate this risk are less clear. Here we test the hypothesis that one pathway involves hormone mechanisms (testosterone and DHEA) that contribute to disruption of hippocampal brain development, which in turn contributes to perturbed emotion regulation and subsequent risk for depression. To do so, we used data from 167 children participating in the Preschool Depression Study, a longitudinal study that followed children from preschool (ages 3 to 5 y) to late adolescence, and which includes prospective assessments of poverty in preschool, measures of testosterone, DHEA, and hippocampal volume across school age and adolescence, and measures of emotion regulation and depression in adolescence. Using multilevel modeling and linear regression, we found that early poverty predicted shallower increases of testosterone, but not DHEA, across development, which in turn predicted shallower trajectories of hippocampal development. Further, we found that early poverty predicted both impaired emotion regulation and depression. The relationship between early poverty and self-reported depression in adolescence was explained by serial mediation through testosterone to hippocampus to emotion dysregulation. There were no significant interactions with sex. These results provide evidence about a hormonal pathway by which early poverty may contribute to disrupted brain development and risk for mental health problems later in life. Identification of such pathways provide evidence for potential points of intervention that might help mitigate the impact of early adversity on brain development.

SUBMITTER: Barch DM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7486761 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Testosterone and hippocampal trajectories mediate relationship of poverty to emotion dysregulation and depression.

Barch Deanna M DM Shirtcliff Elizabeth A EA Elsayed Nourhan M NM Whalen Diana D Gilbert Kirsten K Vogel Alecia C AC Tillman Rebecca R Luby Joan L JL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20200824 36

There is robust evidence that early poverty is associated with poor developmental outcomes, including impaired emotion regulation and depression. However, the specific mechanisms that mediate this risk are less clear. Here we test the hypothesis that one pathway involves hormone mechanisms (testosterone and DHEA) that contribute to disruption of hippocampal brain development, which in turn contributes to perturbed emotion regulation and subsequent risk for depression. To do so, we used data from ...[more]

PMID: 32839328

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Project description:Depression in adults is associated with deficits in a number of cognitive domains, however it remains less clear how early in development theses deficits can be detected in early onset depression. There are several different hypotheses about the links between cognitive function and depression. For example, it has been argued that executive function deficits contribute to emotion regulation difficulties, which in turn increase risk for depression. Further, it has been suggested that some cognitive deficits, such as episodic memory, may reflect hippocampal abnormalities linked to both depression and episodic memory. We examined these questions in adolescents participating in a longitudinal study of preschool onset depression. We measured cognitive function at adolescence using the National Institutes of Health toolbox (vocabulary, processing speed, executive function, working memory and episodic memory), and examined relationships of cognitive deficits to depression, emotion regulation, life stress and adversity, as well as hippocampal volume trajectories over three imaging assessments starting at school age. Depression related deficits in episodic memory were found. Youths with either current and past depression showed episodic memory deficits even after controlling for other psychopathology and family income. Depression severity, emotion dysregulation, and life stress/adversity all predicted episodic memory impairment, as did smaller intercepts and slopes of hippocampal growth over time. Modest relationships of depression to hippocampal volume and strong relationships between emotion regulation and both episodic memory and hippocampal volume were found. These data are consistent with prior work in adults linking depression, episodic memory, emotion regulation, life stress/adversity, and hippocampal volume in adults and suggest similar relations are evident as early as adolescence when memory systems are under development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Dataset Information

Testosterone and hippocampal trajectories mediate relationship of poverty to emotion dysregulation and depression.

Publications

Testosterone and hippocampal trajectories mediate relationship of poverty to emotion dysregulation and depression.

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