title: Altered processing of visual emotional stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder: an event-related potential study.
abstract: Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) display abnormal emotional processing and bias towards emotional content. Most neurophysiological studies in PTSD found higher amplitudes of event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to trauma-related visual content. Here we aimed to characterize brain electrical activity in PTSD subjects in response to non-trauma-related emotion-laden pictures (positive, neutral and negative). A combined behavioral-ERP study was conducted in 14 severe PTSD patients and 14 controls. Response time in PTSD patients was slower compared with that in controls, irrespective to emotional valence. In both PTSD and controls, response time to negative pictures was slower compared with that to neutral or positive pictures. Upon ranking, both control and PTSD subjects similarly discriminated between pictures with different emotional valences. ERP analysis revealed three distinctive components (at ~300, ~600 and ~1000 ms post-stimulus onset) for emotional valence in control subjects. In contrast, PTSD patients displayed a similar brain response across all emotional categories, resembling the response of controls to negative stimuli. We interpret these findings as a brain-circuit response tendency towards negative overgeneralization in PTSD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive-Neuroscience and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel; Department of Psychology and the School of Social-work, Ashkelon Academic College, Ashkelon, Israel; Department of Psychology, Achva Academic College, Beer-Tuvia regional council, Israel.
authors.forename: Rotem
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saar-Ashkenazy
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Soroka University Medical Center, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Hadar
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shalev
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Psychology, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
authors.forename: Magdalena K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Kanthak
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Achva Academic College, Beer-Tuvia regional council, Israel; Beer-Sheva Mental Health Center, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guez
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive-Neuroscience and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Friedman
authors.affiliation: Sharett Institute of Oncology, Hadassah Medical Organization, Kiryat-Hadassah, POB 12000, Jerusalem 91120, Israel. Electronic address: cohenjon@hadassah.org.il.
authors.forename: Jonathan E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012016:Reference Values; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: ERP; Emotion; Overgeneralization; PTSD; Trauma