Project Summary

Christine M. Heim, Ph.D. (Young Investigator 2005) of Emory University, plans to use imaging and other clinical measures to study how early life stress and genetics impact brain development and lead to depression later in life. Dr. Heim hypothesizes that early-life stress interferes with brain development in regions critically involved in stress and emotion processing. Such “lesions” would lead to maladaptive dysregulations in these regions, particularly in response to challenge, and result in exaggerated behavioral and physiological responses that ultimate become depression. Genetic factors also are hypothesized to interact with early-life stress in shaping depression vulnerability at the neural level. Dr. Heim will test these hypotheses in a multidisciplinary study combining functional neuroimaging with clinical, neuroendocrine and genetic measures. A total of 48 women, with and without early life stress, and with and without major depression, will be recruited into 4 groups. A well-validated functional brain imaging paradigm—subliminal processing of masked emotional faces—will be used to identify alterations in neural circuits implicated in emotion. Neural activation patterns also will be linked to endocrine reactivity. Additionally, Dr. Heim will look at the relationship among neural response, early-life trauma and a serotonin transporter gene polymorphism, which is known to impact neural responses to emotional faces and moderates the relationship between child maltreatment and depression. Findings should enhance the understanding of how early-life trauma translates into neural mechanisms and vulnerability to depression, and will promote insight into interactions between early experience and genetic risk at the neural level.

Program Area: MOOD DISORDERS\Unipolar Depression

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