Heterogeneity of defensive responses after exposure to trauma: Blunted autonomic reactivity in response to startling sounds

D’Andrea, Wendy; Pole, Nnamdi; DePierro, Jonathan; Freed, Steven; Wallace, David B.

doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.07.008

Cited by 87 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This study also replicates prior PTSD work that used the LPP (Woodward et al, 2015) but – by showing for the first time that reappraisal effectively modulates the LPP in both veterans with and without PTSD – expands this work and demonstrates that groups do not differ in this regard. Finally, veterans with PTSD did not show increased LPPs during the sustained processing of negative stimuli when asked to maintain their response to these stimuli – a result which may fit with prior evidence of emotional blunting in PTSD (D’Andrea et al, 2013; Felmingham et al, 2014; Kemp et al, 2009; MacNamara et al, 2013; McTeague et al, 2010; Shepherd and Wild, 2014; Tso et al, 2011; Woodward et al, 2015; Zaba et al, 2015) and which opens avenues for future investigation.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…However, this finding has been inconsistently observed and other studies have either failed to find evidence of amygdala hyper-activation in PTSD (Bremner et al, 2003, 1999a, 1999b, Sakamoto et al, 2005; Shin et al, 1999, Yang et al, 2004) or have found evidence of reduced amygdala activation during fear processing in PTSD (Britton et al, 2005; Phan et al, 2006). Along these lines, a growing body of psychophysiological work has found evidence of emotional blunting in this population (D’Andrea et al, 2013; Felmingham et al, 2014; Kemp et al, 2009; MacNamara et al, 2013; McTeague et al, 2010; Shepherd and Wild, 2014; Tso et al, 2011; Woodward et al, 2015; Zaba et al, 2015). For instance, recent work by our group found that military veterans with PTSD showed smaller LPPs to angry faces, compared to their non-PTSD peers (MacNamara et al, 2013) (see also Tso et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An electrocortical investigation of voluntary emotion regulation in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder

Fitzgerald

MacNamara

DiGangi

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – a debilitating disorder characterized by severe deficits in emotion regulation – is prevalent among U.S. military veterans. Research into the pathophysiology of PTSD has focused primarily on emotional reactivity, showing evidence of heightened neural response during negative affect provocation. By comparison, studies of brain functioning during the voluntary regulation of negative affect are limited. In the current study, combat-exposed U.S. military veterans with (n = 25) and without (n = 25) PTSD performed an emotion regulation task during electroencephalographic (EEG) recording. The late positive potential (LPP) was used as a measure of sustained attention toward, and processing of, negative and neutral pictures, and was scored prior to and after instructions to either maintain or down-regulate emotional response using the strategy of cognitive reappraisal. Results showed that groups did not differ in picture-elicited LPP amplitude either prior to or during cognitive reappraisal; reappraisal reduced the LPP in both groups over time. Time-dependent increases in LPP amplitude as a function of emotional reactivity maintenance were evident in the non-PTSD group only. This latter finding may signal PTSD-related deficits in sustained engagement with emotion-processing over the course of several seconds.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An electrocortical investigation of voluntary emotion regulation in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder

Fitzgerald

MacNamara

DiGangi

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

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“…31–43 This heterogeneity may signal that not all individuals with PTSD are characterized by hyper-responsivity to negative stimuli 59–67 , in line with the notion that the disorder may consist of a number of distinct sub-types. 68 …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Individual differences in cognitive reappraisal use and emotion regulatory brain function in combat-exposed veterans with and without PTSD

et al. 2016

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Background Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exhibit marked deficits in emotion regulation. Past research has demonstrated under-engagement of the prefrontal cortex during regulation of negative affect in those with PTSD, but has been unable to find evidence of impaired down-regulation of the amygdala. One possibility is that there exists variability in amygdala reactivity that cuts across diagnostic status and which can be characterized using a continuous measure of individual differences. In healthy/non-traumatized volunteers, individual variability in amygdala engagement during emotion processing and regulation has been shown to relate to habitual use of regulation strategies. Methods The current study examined whether self-reported use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression regulation strategies correlated with brain activation during cognitive reappraisal in combat-exposed veterans with (n = 28) and without PTSD (combat-exposed controls, CEC; n = 20). Results Results showed that greater self-reported use of cognitive reappraisal was associated with less activation in the right amygdala during volitional attempts to attenuate negative affect using reappraisal, irrespective of PTSD diagnosis. Conclusions This finding is in line with prior work and extends evidence of an association between habitual use of regulation strategies and amygdala engagement during emotion regulation to a trauma-exposed sample of individuals both with and without PTSD. Furthermore, by providing evidence of individual differences in regulation-related amygdala response in a traumatized sample, this result may increase understanding of the neural mechanisms that support variability in symptom manifestation observed across individuals with PTSD.

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“…Altered reactivity to loss related stimuli may thus reflect associations with the abuse experience and subsequent coping attempts. Abuse has specifically been associated with increased amygdala reactivity (Dannlowski et al, 2013), decreased modulation of the amygdala by prefrontal regulatory circuitry (Birn et al, 2014) as well as disruptions of peripheral physiological reactivity (D'Andrea et al, 2013; Metzger et al, 1999; Orr et al, 1998). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prolonged physiological reactivity and loss: Association of pupillary reactivity with negative thinking and feelings

Siegle

D’Andrea

Jones

et al. 2015

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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Prolonged psychophysiological reactions to negative information have long been associated with negative thinking and feeling. This association is operationalized in the RDoC negative affect construct of loss, which is nominally indexed by prolonged physiological reactivity, cognitive loss-related constructs such as rumination and guilt, and more feeling-related constructs such as sadness, crying, and anhedonia. These associations have not been tested explicitly. If thinking and feeling aspects of loss reflect different physiological mechanisms, as might be suggested by their putative neurobiology, different intervention pathways might be suggested. Here we examined the extent to which self-reported negative thinking and feeling constructs were associated with prolonged pupillary reactivity following negative words and a subsequent cognitive distractor in a diverse heterogeneously diagnosed sample of N = 84 participants. We also considered indices of abuse and variables associated with borderline personality disorder as possible moderators. Consistently, feeling-related negative affect constructs were related to prolonged pupillary reactivity during the distractor after a negative stimulus whereas thinking-related constructs were not. These data suggest that people who have sustained physiological reactions to emotional stimuli may be more strongly characterized by non-linguistic negative feelings than explicit cognitions related to loss. Sustained physiological reactions could reflect efforts to regulate feeling states. In contrast to cognitive and affective variables, abuse was associated with decreased physiological reactivity, consistent with decreased neural engagement. Interventions that target mechanisms underlying feelings and their regulation may be more mechanistically specific to sustained reactivity than those which directly address cognitions.

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Heterogeneity of defensive responses after exposure to trauma: Blunted autonomic reactivity in response to startling sounds

Cited by 87 publications

References 46 publications

An electrocortical investigation of voluntary emotion regulation in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder

An electrocortical investigation of voluntary emotion regulation in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder

Individual differences in cognitive reappraisal use and emotion regulatory brain function in combat-exposed veterans with and without PTSD

Prolonged physiological reactivity and loss: Association of pupillary reactivity with negative thinking and feelings

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