Gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment lack replicability in a multi-cohort brain-wide association study.

Abstract

Childhood maltreatment effects on cerebral gray matter have been frequently discussed as a neurobiological pathway for depression. However, localizations are highly heterogeneous, and recent reports have questioned the replicability of mental health neuroimaging findings. Here, we investigate the replicability of gray matter correlates of maltreatment, measured retrospectively via the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, across three large adult cohorts (total N = 3225). Pooling cohorts yields maltreatment-related gray matter reductions, with most extensive effects when not controlling for depression diagnosis (maximum partial R² = .022). However, none of these effects significantly replicate across cohorts. Non-replicability is consistent across a variety of maltreatment subtypes and operationalizations, as well as subgroup analyses with and without depression, and stratified by sex. Results are furthermore consistent across a variety of gray matter operationalizations, including voxel-based morphometry and parcellation-based cortical and subcortical measures. In this work, we show that there is little evidence for the replicability of gray matter correlates of childhood maltreatment, when adequately controlling for psychopathology. This underscores the need to focus on replicability research in mental health neuroimaging.