After facing traumatic stress: brain activation, cognition and stress coping in policemen.
BACKGROUND
Resilience can be defined as the capacity to recover following stress or trauma exposure by adopting healthy strategies for dealing with trauma and stress. Although the importance of stress resilience has been recognized, the underlying neurocognitive mediators have not yet been identified. Thus, the primary goal of this study was to investigate memory-related brain activity in traumatized policemen who attended a pre-traumatic general stress coping program.


METHODS
Ten traumatized male police officers were compared to demographically matched non-traumatized officers (n=15) on associative memory by using a block design paradigm. Participants with either another psychiatric comorbidity or neurological disorder were excluded. During functional brain imaging (1.5-Tesla), face-profession pairs had to be encoded twice. For subsequent retrieval the faces were presented as cue stimuli for associating the category of the prior learned profession. Additionally, clinical pattern, stress coping style, and cognitive parameters were assessed.


RESULTS
Less BOLD activation was found in the hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and fusiform gyrus in the trauma group when compared with the non-trauma group during encoding. This was accompanied by slower reaction times in the trauma group during retrieval. Further impairments were found in context memory and in the use of positive cognitive coping strategies.


CONCLUSIONS
Support was provided for the presence of memory-related disturbances in brain activity associated with trauma even in a resilient population. The contribution of the changes in stress coping ability needs to be further examined in longitudinal studies.
Department of Psychiatry, Section of Neurocognition, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Nussbaumstr. 7, D-80336 München, Germany. kristina.fast@med.uni-muenchen.de
Kristina
K
Hennig-Fast
Natalie S
NS
Werner
Ramona
R
Lermer
Knut
K
Latscha
Franziska
F
Meister
Maximilian
M
Reiser
Rolf R
RR
Engel
Thomas
T
Meindl
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D016495:Police; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen