Emotion Regulation Strategy Preference And Brain Structure Basis Of College Students With Childhood Emotional Neglect

Environmental experiences during childhood play an important role in shaping health across the lifespan.In particular,traumatic experiences in childhood are associated with detrimental physical and mental health outcomes.Childhood emotional neglect is a subcategory of childhood trauma.Childhood emotional neglect is a set of behaviors in which caregivers fail to meet a child's basic emotional needs,are unresponsive to a child's distressing emotions,fail to pay attention to their social needs,or expect a child to deal with unsafe events or situations beyond their maturity.Childhood emotional neglect is particularly associated with affective disorders such as depressive disorder and dysthymia.Studies also found that the problem of emotion regulation caused by emotional neglect may be the reason why it negatively affects the physical and mental health of individuals.Childhood emotional neglect may be specifically associated with emotion regulation and its strategies.In addition,previous studies have found that the experience of emotional neglect in childhood is closely related to the changes of brain structure in the brain regions involved in emotion regulation and the use of emotion regulation strategies in adulthood.However,most of the previous studies have focused on the relationship between two of the three variables,and the main variable of interest is mixed childhood trauma.No study has considered the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and brain structural changes,the use of emotion regulation strategies in adulthood.Therefore,through a rigorous subject screening method,with the exclusion of interference from other childhood traumatic experiences and underlying psychopathological conditions,and combined with questionnaires and structural magnetic resonance imaging techniques,the present study aimed to explore the relationship between single childhood emotional neglect experiences and college students' preference for the use of emotion regulation strategies and its brain structural basis.This study is expected to comprehensively reveal the mechanisms by which childhood experiences of emotional neglect increase mental health risks and provide help for subsequent prevention and intervention.Firstly,5010 college students from four universities in Tianjin were tested with the childhood trauma questionnaire,and the potential subjects with single childhood emotional neglect experience were obtained.Potential subjects were then retested and excluded from the study by a pair of attending psychiatrists for possible psychopathology and major physical problems.Finally,21 college students who only had childhood emotional neglect experience(neglect group)and 26 college students without any form of childhood trauma experiences(control group)were obtained.Both groups completed the emotion regulation questionnaire and the structural magnetic resonance imaging.The results indicated that the frequency of cognitive reappraisal strategy use in the control group was significantly higher than that in the neglect group,but there was no significant difference in expressive suppression strategy use between the two groups.Covariance analysis found that the mean gray matter volume of the right middle frontal gyrus in the control group was significantly larger than that of the neglect group.The surface area of the cortex in the right long insular gyrus and central insular sulcus in the control group was significantly smaller than that of the neglect group.Regression analysis and partial correlation analysis showed that the mean gray matter volume of the right middle frontal gyrus was positively associated with the use of cognitive reappraisal strategy.There was a significant negative association between the cortical surface area of the right long insular gyrus and central insular sulcus and the use of cognitive reappraisal strategies.The results suggest that the structural changes in the right middle frontal gyrus and the right long insular gyrus may be the brain structural basis for the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and the use of emotion regulation strategies in college students.Based on the stress acceleration hypothesis,this study argues that the above differences may be related to early stress-induced termination of plasticity during the developmentally sensitive period of emotional behavior.The results of this study suggest that for college students who simply experience childhood emotional neglect,even if they do not have any significant mental health or clinical symptoms of mental illness at this stage,they may be at high risk of mental illness because they preferred emotional regulation strategies.It is necessary to pay attention to the mental health services of this group.