Publications by authors named "Kathy K Peng"
Background: Exposure-based psychotherapy is a first-line treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its mechanisms are poorly understood. Functional brain connectivity is a promising metric for identifying treatment mechanisms and biosignatures of therapeutic response. To this end, we assessed amygdala and insula treatment-related connectivity changes and their relationship to PTSD symptom improvements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- * A specific subgroup was found to have abnormal brain connectivity in the ventral attention network and impaired verbal memory, predicting a poor response to psychotherapy despite similar symptoms and comorbidities.
- * Researchers used noninvasive brain stimulation techniques to analyze changes in neural activity, linking these changes to specific neurobiological mechanisms that may explain why some patients do not respond well to treatment.
Objective: Exposure therapy is an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but many patients do not respond. Brain functions governing treatment outcome are not well characterized. The authors examined brain systems relevant to emotional reactivity and regulation, constructs that are thought to be central to PTSD and exposure therapy effects, to identify the functional traits of individuals most likely to benefit from treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Exposure therapy is an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but a comprehensive, emotion-focused perspective on how psychotherapy affects brain function is lacking. The authors assessed changes in brain function after prolonged exposure therapy across three emotional reactivity and regulation paradigms.
Method: Individuals with PTSD underwent functional MRI (fMRI) at rest and while completing three tasks assessing emotional reactivity and regulation.