Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kim, Gwang-Won
• Park, Jong-Il
• Yang, Jong-Chul

Titel

Brain morphological changes and functional neuroanatomy related to cognitive and emotional distractors during working memory maintenance in post-traumatic stress disorder

Ist Teil von

• Brain research bulletin, 2024-06, Vol.211, p.110946-110946, Article 110946

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ScienceDirect

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with abnormalities in the processing and regulation of emotion as well as cognitive deficits. This study evaluated the differential brain activation patterns associated with cognitive and emotional distractors during working memory (WM) maintenance for human faces between patients with PTSD and healthy controls (HCs) and assessed the relationship between changes in the activation patterns by the opposing effects of distraction types and gray matter volume (GMV). Twenty-two patients with PTSD and twenty-two HCs underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and event-related functional MRI (fMRI), respectively. Event-related fMRI data were recorded while subjects performed a delayed-response WM task with human face and trauma-related distractors. Compared to the HCs, the patients with PTSD showed significantly reduced GMV of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). For the human face distractor trial, the patients showed significantly decreased activities in the superior frontal gyrus and IFG compared with HCs (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). The patients showed lower accuracy scores and slower reaction times for the face recognition task with trauma-related distractors compared with HCs as well as significantly increased brain activity in the STG during the trauma-related distractor trial was observed (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected). Such differential brain activation patterns associated with the effects of distraction in PTSD patients may be linked to neural mechanisms associated with impairments in both cognitive control for confusable distractors and the ability to control emotional distraction. •Reduced volume of inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in patients with PTSD.•This abnormality correlated with CAPS scores, symptoms of PTSD.•IFG was also less activated during WM maintenance with face distractors.•Increased activity in STG during trauma-related distractor trial was observed.•These findings may represent dissociation between cognition and emotion regulation in PTSD.