title: Brain structural plasticity in survivors of a major earthquake.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Stress responses have been studied extensively in animal models, but effects of major life stress on the human brain remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to determine whether survivors of a major earthquake, who were presumed to have experienced extreme emotional stress during the disaster, demonstrate differences in brain anatomy relative to individuals who have not experienced such stressors.
  
  
  METHODS
  Healthy survivors living in an area devastated by a major earthquake and matched healthy controls underwent 3-dimentional high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Survivors were scanned 13-25 days after the earthquake; controls had undergone MRI for other studies not long before the earthquake. We used optimized voxel-based morphometry analysis to identify regional differences of grey matter volume between the survivors and controls.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We included 44 survivors (17 female, mean age 37 [standard deviation (SD) 10.6] yr) and 38 controls (14 female, mean age 35.3 [SD 11.2] yr) in our analysis. Compared with controls, the survivors showed significantly lower grey matter volume in the bilateral insula, hippocampus, left caudate and putamen, and greater grey matter volume in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex and the parietal lobe (all p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparison).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Differences in the variance of survivor and control data could impact study findings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Acute anatomic alterations could be observed in earthquake survivors in brain regions where functional alterations after stress have been described. Anatomic changes in the present study were observed earlier than previously reported and were seen in prefrontal-limbic, parietal and striatal brain systems. Together with the results of previous functional imaging studies, our observations suggest a complex pattern of human brain response to major life stress affecting brain systems that modulate and respond to heightened affective arousal.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), West China Hospital of Sichuan University, China.
authors.forename: Su
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lui
authors.forename: Long
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Qi-Zhu
authors.initials: QZ
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Jun-Ran
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xiao-Qi
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yu-Qin
authors.initials: YQ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hua-Fu
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Raymond C K
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Sweeney
authors.forename: Qi-Yong
authors.initials: QY
authors.lastname: Gong
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001284:Atrophy / Q000473:pathology; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000473:pathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D055866:Earthquakes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006984:Hypertrophy / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D036421:Nerve Fibers, Unmyelinated / Q000473:pathology; D059906:Neuroimaging; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology*