Disrupted rich club organization in structural brain networks is related to childhood maltreatment in major depressive disorder

Junhua Huang¹Bei Rong²Guoqing Gao^3,4,5Mingzhe Zhou¹Haomian Zhao¹Yu Gao¹Ning Tu⁶Lihong Bu⁶Ling Xiao^2*Gaohua Wang^1,2,7*

• ¹Department of Psychiatry, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
• ²Institute of Neuropsychiatry, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
• ³Department of Psychiatry, Affiliated Psychological Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
• ⁴Department of Psychiatry, Hefei Fourth People’s Hospital, Hefei, China
• ⁵Department of Psychiatry, Anhui Mental Health Center, Hefei, China
• ⁶PET-CT/MR Center, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
• ⁷Taikang Center for Life and Medical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Background: Childhood maltreatment plays an important role for developing major depressive disorder (MDD), and many studies have suggested brain structural alterations related to this psychological factor. However, the specific impact of childhood maltreatment on rich club organization in structural brain networks in MDD remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate whether childhood maltreatment was related to the disruption of rich club organization in structural networks in MDD. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we recruited 130 first-episode, drug-naïve MDD patients and 122 healthy controls (HCs). The structural brain networks were reconstructed for all participants based on diffusion imaging data. Subsequently, the rich club organization was determined, and the connectivity measures (strength and density) in different connection classes were calculated and compared. The relationships between connectivity measures and clinical scores were evaluated. Results: The MDD patients with childhood maltreatment showed significant decreased connectivity strength and density in rich club connections, as well as increased connectivity density in feeder connections, as compared to those patients without childhood maltreatment. Besides, HCs with childhood maltreatment had lower connectivity strength and density in feeder connections than that of HCs without childhood maltreatment. Moreover, the correlations between scores of childhood maltreatment and connectivity density in feeder connections were significantly positive in MDD, whereas these correlations exhibited negative in HCs. Conclusion: Our results may reflect the associations between the disrupted rich club organization and childhood maltreatment in MDD. Furthermore, with exposure to childhood maltreatment, the distinct connection patterns in depressed and healthy populations may indicate neuroimaging features associated with individual vulnerability or resilience to developing MDD in context of early life stress.