Pattern of cortical activation during processing of aversive stimuli in traumatized survivors of war and torture

Catani, Claudia; Adenauer, Hannah; Keil, Julian; Aichinger, Hannah; Neuner, Frank

doi:10.1007/s00406-009-0006-4

Cited by 48 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In contrast, for both levels of the pleasant/neutral block, positive associations between shutdown dissociation during testing and minimum-norm estimate were observed for the early time window. These very early effects of visual processing of salient emotional stimuli are consistent with previous findings [15,16]. The standard account of early processing holds that crude perceptual information can be relayed to important emotion centres of the brain before undergoing more sophisticated cortical processing [42,43].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…They found an association between slow wave activity generated in the left ventrolateral frontal cortex and degree of dissociative responding. During recordings of the brain’s magnetic fields emotionally evocative photos have been used to assess the visual emotional processing [14,15]. Results indicate a deviant rapid network activity in the right frontal cortex in response to threatening stimuli.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rapid emotional processing in relation to trauma-related symptoms as revealed by magnetic source imaging

et al. 2014

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BackgroundTraumatic stress leads to functional reorganization in the brain and may trigger an alarm response. However, when the traumatic event produces severe helplessness, the predominant peri-traumatic response may instead be marked by a dissociative shutdown reaction. The neural correlates of this dissociative shutdown were investigated by presenting rapidly presented affective pictures to female participants with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and comparing responses to a Non-PTSD control group.MethodsEvent-related-magnetic-fields were recorded during rapid visual serial presentation of emotionally arousing stimuli (unpleasant or pleasant), which alternated with pictures with low affective content (neutral). Neural sources, based on the L2-surface-minimum-norm, correlated with the severity of the symptom clusters: PTSD, depression and shutdown dissociation.ResultsFor the early cortical response (60 to 110 ms), dissociation and PTSD symptom severity show similar spatial distributions of correlates for unpleasant stimuli. Cortical networks that could be involved in the relationships seem to be widespread.ConclusionWe conclude that shutdown dissociation, PTSD and depression all have distinct effects on early processing of emotional stimuli.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid emotional processing in relation to trauma-related symptoms as revealed by magnetic source imaging

et al. 2014

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“…Using similar stimulation protocols with clients with psychiatric diagnoses like affective disorders, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, who were screened for adverse experiences in childhood demonstrated suppressed posterior activity to emotional pictures around 200 ms (EPN complement;Weber et al, 2009;Matz et al, 2010) but an early frontal activity to aversive pictures could not be verified in this sample. Similarly, Catani et al (2009) found reduced steady-state visual evoked field amplitudes over posterior areas in response to aversive pictures in survivors of war and torture, two-thirds of them fulfilling DSM-IV criteria for PTSD compared to non-traumatized control subjects. In addition, PTSD subjects exhibited augmented activity in superior parietal regions specifically in response to aversive stimuli, which were related to dissociative symptoms and torture severity.…”

Section: Tracing the 'Trauma' In The Brain Circuitrymentioning

confidence: 92%

Traces of fear in the neural web — Magnetoencephalographic responding to arousing pictorial stimuli

Rockstroh

Elbert

2010

International Journal of Psychophysiology

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The concept of a 'fear network', i.e. an interconnected set of neural representations has been instrumental in explaining symptoms and their maintenance in anxiety disorders. The neural representations include both, response propositions such as flight or freezing and chunks of memory, conceptualized as Hebbian cell assemblies. Consequently, the fear network undergoes neuroplastic modifications, for instance, incremental enlargements with repeated exposure to threat and danger. This will in turn modify future processing of sensory stimuli and ultimately lead to an altered architecture of the brain's processing machinery and information processing modes. Using repeated exposure to traumatic stress as a model to study these processes, we summarize a series of magnetoencephalographic investigations from our laboratory, which demonstrate a characteristic pattern of early activation (before 100 ms latency to the eliciting stimulus) in fronto-cortical circuits by high-arousing, aversive pictorial and verbal stimuli in individuals presenting with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We propose that this pattern reflects a preference of stressed brains to engage a 'low road' sensory processing, which is fast but uncoupled from prefrontal regulatory control and which easily activates an alarm response, whereas less emphasis is given the more careful and contextual processing via the 'high road' along the ventral stream. As a result, the brain's architecture is changed from a careful analyzer of the environment to a rapid threat detector with a low threshold to engage in costly defense.

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“…Pearson's correlations were used to determine relationships between brain activity and symptomatology, using difference scores calculated for the effect of working memory load (low-load minus high-load) on the LPP. Because the control group displayed little range on self-report measures of clinical symptomatology, and because the control and GAD groups differed statistically on all MASQ subscales, correlations involving these measures were performed within the GAD group only (Catani, Adenauer, Keil, Aichinger, & Neuner, 2009). Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS (Version 20.0) General Linear Model software.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive load and emotional processing in generalized anxiety disorder: Electrocortical evidence for increased distractibility.

MacNamara¹,

Proudfit²

2014

Journal of Abnormal Psychology

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Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) may be characterized by emotion regulation deficits attributable to an imbalance between top-down (i.e., goal-driven) and bottom-up (i.e., stimulus-driven) attention. In prior work, these attentional processes were examined by presenting unpleasant and neutral pictures within a working memory paradigm. The late positive potential (LPP) measured attention toward task-irrelevant pictures. Results from this prior work showed that working memory load reduced the LPP across participants; however, this effect was attenuated for individuals with greater self-reported state anxiety, suggesting reduced top-down control. In the current study, the same paradigm was used with 106 medication-free, female participants – 71 with GAD and 35 without GAD. Unpleasant pictures elicited larger LPPs, and working memory load reduced the picture-elicited LPP. Compared to healthy controls, participants with GAD showed large LPPs to unpleasant pictures presented under high working memory load. Self-reported symptoms of anhedonic depression were related to a reduced effect of working memory load on the LPP elicited by neutral pictures. These results indicate that individuals with GAD show less flexible modulation of attention when confronted with unpleasant stimuli. Furthermore, among those with GAD, anhedonic depression may broaden attentional deficits to neutral distracters.

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Pattern of cortical activation during processing of aversive stimuli in traumatized survivors of war and torture

Cited by 48 publications

References 49 publications

Rapid emotional processing in relation to trauma-related symptoms as revealed by magnetic source imaging

Rapid emotional processing in relation to trauma-related symptoms as revealed by magnetic source imaging

Traces of fear in the neural web — Magnetoencephalographic responding to arousing pictorial stimuli

Cognitive load and emotional processing in generalized anxiety disorder: Electrocortical evidence for increased distractibility.

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