Abstract
Traumatic memories such as intrusions and flashbacks play a major role in the development and maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A thorough understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying traumatic memories is indispensable for precise diagnosis, for personalized treatment and prevention. In particular, the identification of early neural predictor variables for intrusion development shortly after trauma exposure requires detailed investigation. Here, we examined the neural correlates of early experimental trauma memory retrieval in a traumatic film paradigm in 42 young healthy females, using both implicit and explicit retrieval tasks. We show that implicit experimental trauma retrieval specifically involved the retrosplenial cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), while both retrieval tasks resulted in trauma-related activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the precuneus. Importantly, neural activity early after experimental trauma exposure predicted later intrusion development, with independent contributions from activity in the retrosplenial cortex (implicit retrieval) and the PCC (explicit retrieval). Additional analyses revealed a stronger connectivity between the bilateral amygdala and the supplementary motor area, precentral and paracentral lobule for the control group compared to the experimental trauma group. Our study gives new insights in the neural correlates of experimental trauma memory retrieval and their predictive value for subsequent symptom development. Our results could provide the basis for personalized early treatment and prevention of PTSD. Hum Brain Mapp, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Brain Mapp 38:3592-3602, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Highlights
Principal observations We show that implicit experimental trauma retrieval involved the retrosplenial cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), while both retrieval tasks resulted in traumarelated activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the precuneus
Brain activity during experimental trauma memory retrieval predicts later intrusions we examined the important question whether brain activity identified during implicit and explicit retrieval early after experimental trauma exposure has any predictive value for later development of intrusive memories
This network was specific for retrieval of experimental trauma memories, as the activation in this network critically depended on the existence of memory representation of the traumatic movie: The activation only occurred in participants that saw and witnessed traumatic scenes compared to a control group that was presented with neutral scenes from the same movie and did not witness a traumatic event
Summary
Traumatic memories such as intrusions and flashbacks play a major role in the development and maintenance of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The identification of early neural predictor variables for intrusion development shortly after trauma exposure requires detailed investigation. Experimental design Here we examined the neural correlates of early experimental trauma memory retrieval in a traumatic film paradigm in 42 young healthy females, using both implicit and explicit retrieval tasks. Principal observations We show that implicit experimental trauma retrieval involved the retrosplenial cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), while both retrieval tasks resulted in traumarelated activity in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and the precuneus. Neural activity early after experimental-t auma exposure predicted later intrusion development, with independent contributions from activity in the retrosplenial cortex (implicit retrieval) and the PCC (explicit retrieval).
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