title: Diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on correlations of prewhitened fMRI data: outcomes and areas involved.
abstract: Successful diagnosis of PTSD has been achieved using neural correlations from prewhitened magnetoencephalographic (MEG) time series (Georgopoulos et al. in J Neural Eng 7:16011, 2010. doi:10.1088/1741-2560/7/1/016011; James et al. 2015). Here, we show that highly successful classification of PTSD and control subjects can be obtained using neural correlations from prewhitened resting-state fMRI data. All but one PTSD (14/15; sensitivity = 93.3 %) and all but one control (20/21; specificity = 95.2 %) subjects were correctly classified using 15 out of 2701 possible correlations between 74 brain areas. In contrast, correlations of the same but non-prewhitened data yielded chance-level classifications. We conclude that, if properly processed, fMRI has the prospect of aiding significantly in PTSD diagnosis. Twenty-five brain areas were most prominently involved in correct subject classification, including areas from all cortical lobes and the left pallidum.
authors.affiliation: Brain Sciences Center, Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA.
authors.forename: Peka
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Christova
authors.forename: Lisa M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: James
authors.forename: Brian E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Engdahl
authors.forename: Scott M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lewis
authors.forename: Apostolos P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Georgopoulos
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000098:blood supply* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D011336:Probability; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen