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Altered Early Post-Trauma Resting-State Functional Connectivity Is Associated with PTSD Symptoms Development in Recent Trauma Survivors
Abstract
Patterns of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) following a traumatic event may reflect underlying neurobiological processes that play a critical role in the pathogenesis and recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the current project, we studied the rsFC in trauma survivors who either developed PTSD symptomology or demonstrated recovery from acute stress symptoms. We examined the association between patterns of rsFC and PTSD symptoms at one, six and 14 months after the trauma (T1, T2 and T3, respectively). Clinical and functional MRI (fMRI) were collected from n=157 adult individuals recruited from the emergency department at T1 (51.3% female; mean age = 33.35 years), n=120 at T2 (55.6% female; mean age = 34.42 years) and n=111 at T3 (55.8% female; mean age = 34.69 years). PTSD severity was evaluated with Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 and patterns of rsFC were examined using the seed-based and connectome-wide approaches. We focused on the seed regions of the Default-Mode Network (DMN; ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), hippocampus (Hpc), and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)) and Salience Network (SN; anterior insula, dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC), and amygdala), which have been reported to be altered in PTSD. Results demonstrated that decreased within-DMN connectivities between Hpc and vmPFC, Hpc and PCC, vmPFC and Temporal Gyrus (TG) detected shortly after trauma are associated with less recovery over 14 months period. We also found that greater connectivity between each of SN regions with the visual cortex (calcarine) at T1 are associated with more PTSD symptoms six months after the trauma. Greater SNDMN connectivities between Hpc and insula, insula and TG, were associated with less symptoms at T3, suggesting that neural patterns between these networks are complex (goes beyond desegregation pattern), possibly depend on the functions of specific regions involved, and may vary based on the time since trauma. Overall, our study suggests that specific patterns of within DMN connectivity detected early after trauma could potentially be used as biomarkers to predict PTSD symptoms development. Future research is needed to replicate and elucidate other neural predictors of PTSD symptoms, as it could potentially help to optimize existing treatment approaches for PTSD.
Subject
Posttraumatic stress disorderTrauma
fMRI, Functional connectivity, Default Mode Network (DMN)
Citation
Lokshina, Yana (2023). Altered Early Post-Trauma Resting-State Functional Connectivity Is Associated with PTSD Symptoms Development in Recent Trauma Survivors. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /198982.