Trauma modulates amygdala and medial prefrontal responses to consciously attended fear

By L. Williams, Andrew H. Kemp, K. Felmingham, Matthew J. Barton, Gloria Olivieri, Anthony Peduto, E. Gordon, Richard A. Bryant. NeuroImage, 2006

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Effective fear processing relies on the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Post-trauma reactions provide a compelling model for examining how the heightened experience of fear impacts these systems. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with excessive amygdala and a lack of MPFC activity in response to nonconscious facial signals of fear, but responses to consciously processed facial fear stimuli have not been examined. We used functional MRI to elucidate the effect of trauma reactions on amygdala-MPFC function during an overt fear perception task. Subjects with PTSD (n = 13) and matched non-traumatized healthy subjects (n = 13) viewed 15 blocks of eight fearful face stimuli alternating pseudorandomly with 15 blocks of neutral faces (stimulus duration 500 ms; ISI 767 ms). We used random effects analyses in SPM2 to examine within- and between-group differences in the MPFC and amygdala search regions of interest. Time series data were used to examine amygdala-MPFC associations and changes across the first (Early) versus second (Late) phases of the experiment. Relative to non-traumatized subjects, PTSD subjects showed a marked bilateral reduction in MPFC activity (in particular, right anterior cingulate cortex, ACC), which showed a different Early-Late pattern to non-traumatized subjects and was more pronounced with greater trauma impact and symptomatology. PTSD subjects also showed a small but significant enhancement in left amygdala activity, most apparent during the Late phase, but reduction in Early right amygdala response. Over the time course, trauma was related to a distinct pattern of ACC and amygdala connections. The findings suggest that major life trauma may disrupt the normal pattern of medial prefrontal and amygdala regulation.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f5e1c4f0e86d7ceacd93ed553a5af9cffacd58b

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Citations in the corpus

The Neurocircuitry of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety Disorders (2011, background): “…et al, 2007), trauma-related photographs or words (Driessen et al, 2004; Hendler et al, 2003; Morey et al, 2009; Protopopescu et al, 2005), fear conditioning (Bremner et al, 2005), and fearful facial expressions (Bryant et al, 2008b; Rauch et al, 2000; Shin et al, 2005; Williams et al, 2006).”
Reduced resting-state functional connectivity between amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex in social anxiety disorder (2011, background): “…associated with orbitofrontal reactivity during the suppression of negative emotions (Phan et al., 2005) and presence of threatening stimuli (Garcia et al., 1999), in generalized anxiety disorder (Monk et al., 2008) and posttraumatic stress disorder (Shin et al., 2005; Williams et al., 2006).”
Sequence of information processing for emotions based on the anatomic dialogue between prefrontal cortex and amygdala (2007, background): “…the amygdala are many and varied, including obsessive–compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and autism (e.g., Rauch et al., 2000; Hariri et al., 2003; Mayberg, 2003; Drevets, 2003; Kent et al., 2005; Bachevalier and Loveland, 2006; Williams et al., 2006).”
Increased amygdala and insula activation during emotion processing in anxiety-prone subjects. (2007, methodology): “In light of recent observations that medial prefrontal cortex activity may be reduced in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in concert with amygdala hyperreactivity, perhaps reflecting inadequate top-down regulation of the amygdala by the medial prefrontal cortex in patients with anx”
Functional neuroimaging of anxiety: a meta-analysis of emotional processing in PTSD, social anxiety disorder, and specific phobia. (2007, background): “(2006) (8) 13 13 Fearful and neutral faces Fearful-neutral No fMRI”
The Temporal Dynamics Model of Emotional Memory Processing: A Synthesis on the Neurobiological Basis of Stress-Induced Amnesia, Flashbulb and Traumatic Memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson Law (2007, background): “[405]), which could form the basis of certain symptoms of PTSD, such as chronic hypervigilance, attention deficits, and impaired executive functioning (Vermetten and Bremner [406]; Shin et al.”