Affect and neural activity in women with PTSD during a task of emotional interference.
The current study sought to determine the relationship between self-reported dimensions of affect and activation in brain regions associated with emotion regulation in PTSD during a task of non-conscious emotional processing in interpersonal trauma survivors with PTSD and healthy controls.



Participants included 52 women diagnosed with PTSD and 18 female healthy controls. All participants completed a clinical assessment including the SCID, CAPS, and PANAS followed by a functional MRI assessment including a task of implicit emotional conflict.



When PTSD participants were oriented to fearful faces, negative affect (NA) was inversely related to activation in the left amygdala and positive affect (PA) was inversely related to activation in the right amygdala. When ignoring fearful faces, NA was positively associated with activation in the right parahippocampal gyrus and PA was inversely related to activation in the left hippocampus. Similar results were observed in healthy controls regarding PA. However, NA was not significantly related to any region of interest in healthy controls.



Limitations include the homogeneity of the healthy controls with regard to racial diversity, results may only be specific to female interpersonal trauma survivors with PTSD, and neutral faces within the conflict task may be perceived as negative by clinical samples.



Persistent, increased NA may represent a proxy for disruptions in emotional processing in interpersonal trauma survivors with PTSD. As such, clinicians may prioritize increasing emotional awareness through emotion regulation and/or distress tolerance strategies in this population.
Center for the Treatment and Study of Traumatic Stress, Summa St. Thomas Hospital, Akron, OH, USA. Electronic address: brownwj@summahealth.org.
Wilson J
WJ
Brown
School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Jessica A
JA
Wojtalik
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA.
Daniel
D
Dewey
Center for Trauma Recovery, University of Missouri, St. Louis, USA; Departments of Psychiatry, Radiology, and Neurology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Steven E
SE
Bruce
Departments of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurology University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Zhen
Z
Yang
Departments of Psychiatry, Radiology, and Neurology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA; Departments of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurology University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Yvette I
YI
Sheline
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D000679:Amygdala / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D020534:Parahippocampal Gyrus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D057566:Self Report; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D017741:Survivors / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
Affect; Interpersonal trauma; Neuroimaging; PTSD; fMRI