Adverse childhood experiences and cognitive function among adults with excess adiposity

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and obesity are independently associated with brain/neurocognitive health. Despite a growing emphasis on the importance of early life adversity on health, the relationship between ACEs and neurocognition in adults with overweight/obesity is unclear. The objective was to examine associations between self-reported ACEs and measured neurocognitive domains in a sample of adults with overweight/obesity. Methods: Participants were 95 predominantly white, highly educated adult women (76% female, 81% Caucasian, and 75% ≥ bachelor's degree) with excess adiposity enrolled in the Cognitive and Self-regulatory Mechanisms of Obesity Study. ACEs and fluid/crystallized neurocognitive domains were measured at baseline using the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale and the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery and Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric, respectively. Results: Higher ACEs scores were negatively correlated with fluid cognition (r = −.34, P <.001) but not crystallized cognition (r =.01, ns). Individuals with 3 and 4+ ACEs displayed significantly lower fluid cognition scores than those with fewer ACEs F_4,89 = 3.24, P <.05. After accounting for body mass index (BMI), age, sex, race, and education, higher ACEs scores were still associated with poorer performance on overall fluid cognition (β = −.36, P <.01), along with the following subtests: Stroop Colour/Word test (β = −.23, P <.05), Go/No-Go omissions (β =.29, P <.01), and Picture Sequence Memory task (β = −.30, P <.01). Conclusions: The role of ACEs in health may be related to their associations with executive function and episodic neurocognitive domains essential to cognitive processing and self-regulation. Obesity science should further examine the role of ACEs and neurocognition in obesity prevention, prognosis, and treatment using more rigorous, prospective designs and more diverse samples.