Research reportThe interaction of corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor gene and early life stress on emotional empathy
Section snippets
Background
Early life stress (ELS) such as emotional or physical neglect and abuse considerably increase the risk of developing psychiatric disorders in later life [1]. Converging evidence from animal models and human studies indicates that ELS not only causes persisting changes to the stress system, i.e., the corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis [2], but also induces structural, functional, and epigenetic changes in brain regions involved in
Subjects
All subjects were recruited from responses to advertising in local newspapers and mailing lists. The initial sample consisted of N = 1402. In a first step, we excluded all participants that did not meet the following inclusion criteria: age between 18 and 90 years, absence of present and past diagnosis of psychiatric or neurologic disorder, absence of major or unstable general medical conditions, and ability to participate in study procedures. Absence of present and past diagnosis of psychiatric
Sample
In the final sample of N = 541, data from 5 subjects could not be evaluated because of missing CTQ, MET or EQ data. Furthermore, we had to exclude 24 subjects with missing genetic data and 9 subjects with rare genotype combinations. One subject was identified as an outlier due to a CTQ-score of 113 and also excluded, which resulted in a corrected sample size of N = 502 (see Table 1). Participants represent the middle range of socioeconomic status in the general population of Germany and more than
Conclusions
The present study investigated the effects of CRHR1 gene on the relationship between ELS experience and social cognition in healthy adults. Subjects were genotyped for rs110402 and rs242924 within the CRHR1 gene. We found that severity of ELS was associated with decreased implicit and explicit emotional, but not cognitive empathy. Exposure to ELS had a particularly strong impact on implicit emotional empathy in subjects with the common homozygous GG GG genotype. In this group, subjects showed
Conflict of interest
None.
Financial support
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Acknowledgement
None.
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2020, Evolution and Human BehaviorLack of association of common polymorphisms linked to empathic behavior with self-reported trait empathy in healthy volunteers
2020, Hormones and BehaviorCitation Excerpt :The rs242924 polymorphism had been associated with higher cortisol levels in a social stress challenge compared to A allele carriers (Mahon et al., 2013a). Moreover, the combination of CRHR1 rs242924 GG and rs110402 GG genotypes has been linked with decreased implicit emotional empathy in individuals exposed to early life stress (Grimm et al., 2017). Considering the evidence supporting a role of the abovementioned genetic variations in the domain of cooperative and empathic behavior, we expected significant associations with trait empathy.
Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis-related genes and cognition in major mood disorders and schizophrenia: a systematic review
2020, Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :Different groups have suggested an effect of CRHR1 SNPs rs110402 and rs242924 in the association between early life stress and age on hippocampal and prefrontal cortex tasks such as working memory (Fuge et al., 2014; Grimm et al., 2015). The same variation has also been associated with impaired emotional empathy related to early life stress (Grimm et al., 2017). Some studies focusing on the TAT haplotype of CRHR1 (formed by rs7209436, rs110402, and rs242924) have shown an association with an increase in brooding rumination, a recognized cognitive endophenotype of depression, in children with depressed mothers (Van Hulle et al., 2017; Woody et al., 2016).
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