signature=4b44035312b41f6914a743c64ccadc5b,Undergraduate Honors Thesis | Neural Signatures of Affect...

Emotional regulation is a fundamental aspect of adaptive behavior that is often disrupted in

patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The goal of the present study was to

examine the neural correlates of social emotional processing in PTSD and their association with

PTSD symptom severity.

Methods: 100 veterans with PTSD and 20 healthy controls without PTSD or military history

underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while completing an emotional facematching

task. Additionally, subjects completed the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale

(CAPS), Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS), and DKEFS Color-Word interference tasks. I

hypothesized that the PTSD group would show greater emotional reactivity compared to control

subjects in that veterans would show greater amygdala and limbic and less medial frontal cortex

(mFC) activity. I further hypothesized that hyperarousal of the amygdala in the PTSD group

would be associated with greater CAPS, BIS, and lower DKEFS Color-Word interference scores.

Results: Veterans demonstrated greater mFC and posterior temporal fusiform cortex (ptFC)

activity than controls during faces, and greater mFC, ptFC, and orbito-frontal cortex (OFC)

activity than controls in the shapes block. No differences were found in amygdala activation or

error rates. There were many significant correlations between regional brain activation and

clinical measures, notably, between the right amygdala and total CAPS scores.

Conclusions: Hyperarousal of the mFC and OFC in PTSD suggests a compensatory mechanism

of affective regulation. The mFC showed a direct relationship to the amygdala, contradicting

previous research. Deficits in several regions correspond to more severe PTSD symptoms,

indicating that these regions may be instrumental in emotional regulation. Increased activation to

shapes corresponds to increased PTSD symptoms, suggesting that inappropriate limbic activation

is associated with PTSD symptoms. Future research should explore white matter connectivity

and volumetric differences among the areas discussed here, and how they relate to PTSD

symptomatology, in order to develop more targeted interventions against PTSD.