Cognitive Control in the Face of Fear: Reduced Cognitive-Emotional Flexibility in Women with a History of Child Abuse

Abstract

Child abuse can negatively affect neurobiological systems involved in regulating emotions. Adults who were maltreated as children show diminished capacity to flexibly integrate the prefrontal and limbic circuits underlying emotion regulation. Using a facial identification Stroop task with nonemotional and emotional stimuli, we found that women who reported more childhood abuse (N = 44) were no different from women reporting less childhood abuse (N = 45) on nonemotional conflict adaptation, but were significantly less able to adapt to emotional conflict. Women who reported more abuse were especially impaired in adapting to emotional conflict when incongruent stimuli involved a fearful face. These results help characterize the relation between cognitive control and emotion regulation and highlight the far-reaching effects of childhood abuse on cognitive-emotional flexibility.

KEYWORDS:

• amygdala
• anterior cingulate cortex
• child abuse
• childhood maltreatment
• cognitive control
• cognitive flexibility
• conflict adaptation
• emotion regulation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We kindly thank Erika Portillo for her assistance with data collection. We greatly appreciate the contributions of various Yolo County agencies, their staff, and all the women who participated in this research.

FUNDING

This research was funded by a “Bridging the Causeway” pilot grant to Michael J. Minzenberg and Jon G. Caldwell, sponsored by the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research, the Clinical and Translational Science Center, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, all at the University of California, Davis.