title: Cortical folding in post-traumatic stress disorder after motor vehicle accidents: Regional differences in gyrification.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have revealed evidence of brain abnormalities in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients. Cortical complexity and local gyrification index (lGI) reflect potential biological processes associated with normal or abnormal cognitive functioning. In the current study, lGI was used to explore cortical folding in PTSD patients involved in motor vehicle accidents (MVA).
  
  
  METHODS
  MRI brain scans were acquired from 18 PTSD patients who had suffered MVA at least 6 months previously and 18 healthy control subjects. All MRI images were obtained on a 3-T Siemens MRI machine and the cortical folding was analyzed using the workflow provided by software FreeSurfer. A general FreeSurfer's general linear model was used in the group analysis. In addition, correlation analysis was performed between the average of lGI extracted from the significantly different areas and the data for the clinical scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The PTSD patients had significantly greater Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale scores than the control group. The patients showed significantly reduced lGI in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex, consistent with findings of previous volumetric studies on PTSD. But there were no significant correlations in the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex between Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale scores and lGI.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We suggest that abnormal gyrification in PTSD patients can be an important indicator of neurodevelopment deficits and may indeed be a biological marker for PTSD.
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Chun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Mingguo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Kaijun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Liwen
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Imaging, Institute of Computing Medicine, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Shaoxiang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D058068:Endophenotypes; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000473:pathology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: cortical folding; local gyrification index; magnetic resonance imaging; post-traumatic stress disorder