title: Brain reactivity to unpleasant stimuli is associated with severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms.
abstract: Despite the impressive progress in the biological research of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), little is known about the neurobiological correlates of emotional reactions in healthy people with posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). The present study investigated whether PTSS are related to the electrocortical processing of unpleasant pictures in a sample of undergraduate students. Participants were instructed to judge whether images were unpleasant or neutral while an EEG was taken. The late positive potential (LPP) to unpleasant relative to neutral was more positive for people with high PTSS than with low PTSS. Additionally, a temporospatial principal components analysis (PCA) for the whole sample identified positivities that were directly correlated with PTSS. These results provide evidence that brain reactivity to unpleasant cues would predict PTSS intensity and thus be a biomarker of PTSS severity.
authors.affiliation: Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Hernani Pires de Mello, 101, Niterói 24210130, Brazil. Electronic address: isabela@vm.uff.br.
authors.forename: Isabela
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Lobo
authors.affiliation: Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Hernani Pires de Mello, 101, Niterói 24210130, Brazil. Electronic address: isabeldavid@id.uff.br.
authors.forename: Isabel A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: David
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Psiquiatria, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Avenida Venceslau Brás, 71, Rio de Janeiro 22290140, Brazil. Electronic address: ivanfigueira13@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Figueira
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Avenida Carlos Chagas Filho, 373, Rio de Janeiro 21941902, Brazil. Electronic address: rafacampagnoli@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Rafaela R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Campagnoli
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Biofísica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Avenida Carlos Chagas Filho, 373, Rio de Janeiro 21941902, Brazil. Electronic address: evolchan@biof.ufrj.br.
authors.forename: Eliane
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Volchan
authors.affiliation: Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Hernani Pires de Mello, 101, Niterói 24210130, Brazil. Electronic address: mirtes@vm.uff.br.
authors.forename: Mirtes G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Pereira
authors.affiliation: Instituto Biomédico, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rua Hernani Pires de Mello, 101, Niterói 24210130, Brazil. Electronic address: ldol@vm.uff.br.
authors.forename: Leticia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: de Oliveira
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003463:Cues; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000503:physiopathology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERP; Emotion; Emotional reactivity; LPP; PCA; PTSD; Posttraumatic stress symptoms; Trauma