Examining the association between posttraumatic stress disorder and disruptions in cortical networks identified using data-driven methods

Jin Yang, Ashley A. Huggins, Delin Sun, C. Lexi Baird, Courtney C. Haswell, Jessie L. Frijling, Miranda Olff, Mirjam van Zuiden, Saskia B.J. Koch, Laura Nawijn, Dick J. Veltman, Benjamin Suarez-Jimenez, Xi Zhu, Yuval Neria, Anna R. Hudson, Sven C. Mueller, Justin T. Baker, Lauren A.M. Lebois, Milissa L. Kaufman, Rongfeng QiGuang Ming Lu, Pavel Říha, Ivan Rektor, Emily L. Dennis, Christopher R.K. Ching, Sophia I. Thomopoulos, Lauren E. Salminen, Neda Jahanshad, Paul M. Thompson, Dan J. Stein, Sheri M. Koopowitz, Jonathan C. Ipser, Soraya Seedat, Stefan du Plessis, Leigh L. van den Heuvel, Li Wang, Ye Zhu, Gen Li, Anika Sierk, Antje Manthey, Henrik Walter, Judith K. Daniels, Christian Schmahl, Julia I. Herzog, Israel Liberzon, Anthony King, Mike Angstadt, Nicholas D. Davenport, Scott R. Sponheim, Seth G. Disner, Thomas Straube, David Hofmann, Daniel W. Grupe, Jack B. Nitschke, Richard J. Davidson, Christine L. Larson, Terri A. deRoon-Cassini, Jennifer U. Blackford, Bunmi O. Olatunji, Evan M. Gordon, Geoffrey May, Steven M. Nelson, Chadi G. Abdallah, Ifat Levy, Ilan Harpaz-Rotem, John H. Krystal, Rajendra A. Morey, Aristeidis Sotiras

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with lower cortical thickness (CT) in prefrontal, cingulate, and insular cortices in diverse trauma-affected samples. However, some studies have failed to detect differences between PTSD patients and healthy controls or reported that PTSD is associated with greater CT. Using data-driven dimensionality reduction, we sought to conduct a well-powered study to identify vulnerable networks without regard to neuroanatomic boundaries. Moreover, this approach enabled us to avoid the excessive burden of multiple comparison correction that plagues vertex-wise methods. We derived structural covariance networks (SCNs) by applying non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to CT data from 961 PTSD patients and 1124 trauma-exposed controls without PTSD. We used regression analyses to investigate associations between CT within SCNs and PTSD diagnosis (with and without accounting for the potential confounding effect of trauma type) and symptom severity in the full sample. We performed additional regression analyses in subsets of the data to examine associations between SCNs and comorbid depression, childhood trauma severity, and alcohol abuse. NMF identified 20 unbiased SCNs, which aligned closely with functionally defined brain networks. PTSD diagnosis was most strongly associated with diminished CT in SCNs that encompassed the bilateral superior frontal cortex, motor cortex, insular cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, medial occipital cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex. CT in these networks was significantly negatively correlated with PTSD symptom severity. Collectively, these findings suggest that PTSD diagnosis is associated with widespread reductions in CT, particularly within prefrontal regulatory regions and broader emotion and sensory processing cortical regions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)609-619
Number of pages11
JournalNeuropsychopharmacology
Volume49
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2024

Keywords

  • Humans
  • Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/psychology
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging
  • Brain
  • Emotions
  • Prefrontal Cortex

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Psychiatry and Mental health
  • Pharmacology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Examining the association between posttraumatic stress disorder and disruptions in cortical networks identified using data-driven methods'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this