Background
Functional brain imaging studies in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have focused
mostly on war or sexual abuse victims, many of whom also had comorbid disorders. The
aim of this study was to examine the neuronal circuitry underlying responses to script-driven
imagery in traumatized police officers with and without PTSD and with low comorbidity
rates.
Methods
In a case-matched control study, 30 traumatized police officers with and without PTSD
underwent clinical assessment and 99mtechnetium-hexa-methyl-propylene-amine-oxime single photon emission computed tomography
scanning with neutral and trauma scripts. Statistical parametric mapping was applied
to analyze changes in regional cerebral blood flow.
Results
The main findings were significantly less activation in the medial frontal gyrus and
more activation in the right cuneus in the PTSD group relative to the trauma-exposed
control group in reaction to trauma versus neutral scripts. Within the PTSD group,
subjects showed less activation in the superior temporal gyrus, left lentiform nucleus,
left middle frontal gyrus, and left inferior frontal gyrus in reaction to trauma scripts.
Conclusions
We confirmed previous findings of dysfunction of the medial frontal gyrus in PTSD
in a new population with low comorbidity rates. Other alterations were found in certain
brain structures involved in emotional, memory, linguistic, visuospatial, and motor
processing.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
August 1,
2004
Received in revised form:
July 23,
2004
Received:
February 25,
2004
Identification
Copyright
© 2004 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
