Abstract

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that involves impaired regulation of the fear response to traumatic reminders. This study tested how women with male-perpetrated interpersonal violence-related PTSD (IPV-PTSD) differed in their brain activation from healthy controls (HC) when exposed to scenes of male–female interaction of differing emotional content. Sixteen women with symptoms of IPV-PTSD and 19 HC participated in this study. During magnetic resonance imaging, participants watched a stimulus protocol of 23 different 20 s silent epochs of male–female interactions taken from feature films, which were neutral, menacing or prosocial. IPV-PTSD participants compared with HC showed (i) greater dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activation in response to menacing vs prosocial scenes and (ii) greater anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right hippocampus activation and lower ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activty in response to emotional vs neutral scenes. The fact that IPV-PTSD participants compared with HC showed lower activity of the ventral ACC during emotionally charged scenes regardless of the valence of the scenes suggests that impaired social perception among IPV-PTSD patients transcends menacing contexts and generalizes to a wider variety of emotionally charged male–female interactions.

Details

Title
Violence-related PTSD and neural activation when seeing emotionally charged male–female interactions
Author
Moser, Dominik A 1 ; Aue, Tatjana 2 ; Suardi, Francesca 1 ; Kutlikova, Hana 2 ; Cordero, Maria I 1 ; Ana Sancho Rossignol 2 ; Favez, Nicolas 2 ; Sandra Rusconi Serpa 1 ; Schechter, Daniel S 1 

 Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 2 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 4 Faculty of Health, Psychology and Social Care, Manchester Metropolitan University, and 5 Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland; Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 2 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 4 Faculty of Health, Psychology and Social Care, Manchester Metropolitan University, and 5 Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland 
 Faculty of Psychology and Education, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 2 Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Geneva Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 4 Faculty of Health, Psychology and Social Care, Manchester Metropolitan University, and 5 Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland 
Pages
645-653
Publication year
2015
Publication date
May 2015
Publisher
Oxford University Press
ISSN
17495016
e-ISSN
17495024
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
3171528333
Copyright
© The Author(s) (2014). Published by Oxford University Press. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.