Interpersonal violence in posttraumatic women: brain networks triggered by trauma-related pictures

Abstract

Interpersonal violence (IPV) is one of the most frequent causes for the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in women. Trauma-related triggers have been proposed to evoke automatic emotional responses in PTSD. The present functional magnetic resonance study investigated the neural basis of trauma-related picture processing in women with IPV-PTSD (n = 18) relative to healthy controls (n = 18) using a newly standardized trauma-related picture set and a non-emotional vigilance task. We aimed to identify brain activation and connectivity evoked by trauma-related pictures, and associations with PTSD symptom severity. We found hyperactivation during trauma-related vs neutral picture processing in both subcortical [basolateral amygdala (BLA), thalamus, brainstem] and cortical [anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), insula, occipital cortex] regions in IPV-PTSD. In patients, brain activation in amygdala, ACC, insula, occipital cortex and brainstem correlated positively with symptom severity. Furthermore, connectivity analyses revealed hyperconnectivity between BLA and dorsal ACC/mPFC. Results show symptom severity-dependent brain activation and hyperconnectivity in response to trauma-related pictures in brain regions related to fear and visual processing in women suffering from IPV-PTSD. These brain mechanisms appear to be associated with immediate responses to trauma-related triggers presented in a non-emotional context in this PTSD subgroup.

Brain activation during disorder-related script-driven imagery in panic disorder: a pilot study

“…The ROI based voxel-level threshold was set to p < 0.005 to balance between Type I and II error rates (see also 111 ), considering the realistic effect sizes in studies with patients 92,112 . The thresholded maps were submitted to an ROI-based correction criterion for multiple comparisons based on the estimate of the maps spatial smoothness and on an iterative procedure (Monte Carlo simulation as implemented in BrainVoyager), which do not use the Gaussian random-field approach for cluster-size thresholding.…”

Transdiagnostic brain responses to disorder-related threat across four psychiatric disorders

“…The final patient sample comprised 20 PD patients (16 female), 20 SAD patients (13 female), 16 DP patients (13 female) and 11 PTSD patients (all females). All patients were part of larger disorder-specific studies, with less restrictive sample requirements (Feldker et al 2016; Heitmann et al 2016; Neumeister et al in press). In the present study, a same-size HC group, matched for age, gender and education was assigned to each patient group (see Table 1 for sample characteristics), resulting in a specific control group for each patient group.…”

Making Sense of Other People’s Encounters: Towards an Integrative Model of Relational Impression Formation

“…There is also good reason to believe that variance in terms of impression functionality may not only be determined by what an impression is about, but also by what it feels like. Numerous studies indicate that spontaneous encounter-based impressions are often accompanied by rapid affective responses, ranging from anxiety, disgust, and eeriness (Neumeister et al 2017;Quadflieg et al 2016;Skinner and Hudac 2017;Vrtička et al 2012) to admiration, enjoyment, and warmth (Hamilton and Meston 2017;Seibt et al 2018). These affective responses seem to guide perceivers' own social intentions and/or actions particularly strongly.…”

“…Inspired by this line of research, numerous researchers have begun to scrutinize the effects of perceivers' mental or physical health on encounter-based impressions by testing patients diagnosed with well-known psychiatric disorders (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder, psychopathy; Decety et al 2015;Moser et al 2015;Neumeister et al 2017), neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., Fragile X syndrome, Williams syndrome; Riby and Hancock;2008;Williams et al 2013), or neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, dementia; Cavallo et al 2011a, b). Although many of these studies have been explorative in nature and require systematic replication, some have provided converging evidence that encounter-based impressions are less accurate and consensual in two psychiatric disorders: schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).…”