Translating between neurobiology, behavior, and clinical intervention: Leveraging threat learning as a mechanism linking childhood trauma and psychopathology

Invited Grand Rounds talk given to the Cambridge Health Alliance Department of Psychiatry on January 12, 2022.

Abstract: Childhood trauma is common, and one of the most robust and global risk factors for the development of psychopathology. When childhood trauma introduces potent threat into the environment, the way that children learn to detect, interpret, and respond to threats is altered on neurobiological and psychological levels in ways that predispose for fear- and stress-related clinical disorders. These threat learning mechanisms underlie both the etiology and common effective treatments of such disorders. Elucidating the specific ways in which childhood trauma influences these mechanisms presents an opportunity to optimize existing interventions and develop novel approaches.

Learning objectives: 

1. Describe three fear learning mechanisms and their role in the etiology of fear- and stress-based disorders

2. Identify how childhood trauma alters these mechanisms and thereby predisposes individuals towards psychopathology

3. Explain the relevance of fear learning mechanisms to transdiagnostic intervention processes and discuss areas ripe for optimization and innovation based on advances in work on childhood trauma