Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage and the Neurobiology of Uncertainty in Traumatically Injured Adults.

Background: Individuals residing in more socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods experience greater uncertainty through insecurity of basic needs such as food, employment, and housing, compared with more advantaged neighborhoods. Although the neurobiology of uncertainty has been less frequently examined in relation to neighborhood disadvantage, there is evidence that neighborhood disadvantage is associated with widespread neural alterations.

Methods: Recently traumatically injured participants ( = 90) completed a picture anticipation task in the magnetic resonance imaging scanner, in which they viewed images presented in a temporally predictable or unpredictable manner.

Association between spatial working memory and Re-experiencing symptoms in PTSD.

Background And Objectives: Few studies have evaluated the link between working memory (WM) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Further, it is unknown whether this relationship is accounted for by other relevant variables including negative affect, emotional dysregulation, or general non-WM-related cognitive control deficits, which are associated with PTSD. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which a computerized WM task could predict PTSD symptomology incrementally beyond the contribution of other relevant variables associated with PTSD.

Acute White Matter Integrity Post-trauma and Prospective Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms.

Little is known about what distinguishes those who are resilient after trauma from those at risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous work indicates white matter integrity may be a useful biomarker in predicting PTSD. Research has shown changes in the integrity of three white matter tracts-the cingulum bundle, corpus callosum (CC), and uncinate fasciculus (UNC)-in the aftermath of trauma relate to PTSD symptoms.

A 7-Tesla MRI study of the periaqueductal gray: resting state and task activation under threat.

The periaqueductal gray (PAG) is a region of the midbrain implicated in a variety of behaviors including defensive responses to threat. Despite the wealth of knowledge pertaining to the differential functional roles of the PAG columns in nonhuman and human research, the basic functional connectivity of the PAG at rest has not been well characterized. Therefore, the current study utilized 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to characterize PAG functional connectivity at rest and task activation under uncertain threat.

Neural substrates of human fear generalization: A 7T-fMRI investigation.

Fear generalization - the tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli as threatening due to perceptual similarity to a learned threat - is an adaptive process. Overgeneralization, however, is maladaptive and has been implicated in a number of anxiety disorders. Neuroimaging research has indicated several regions sensitive to effects of generalization, including regions involved in fear excitation (e.

Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with stable deficits in neurocognitive functioning in traumatically-injured adults.

Background: In trauma-exposed adults, the relationship between an individual's socioeconomic position (SEP) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been well demonstrated. One potential mechanism by which the stress associated with lower SEPs may impact trauma outcomes is through changes in neurocognition. In both healthy and clinical samples, area-level factors also appear to be independently related to neurocognition.

High-Resolution Resting-State Functional Connectivity of the Extended Amygdala.

The extended amygdala has been implicated as a critical region in the neurocircuitry underlying anxiety. The circuitry of the extended amygdala, including the central (CeA) and basolateral (BLA) nuclei of the amygdala and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), has been well defined in nonhuman animals; however, much less is known about the roles and interactions of these structures in humans given their small size. Therefore, this study used high-resolution 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging to define, compare, and contrast functional connectivity (FC) of these structures in 57 neurologically healthy young adults.

Reward-related distracters and working memory filtering.

Reward-related stimuli capture attention, even when they are task irrelevant. A consequence of attentional prioritization of reward-related stimuli is that they may also have preferential access to working memory like other forms of emotional information. However, whether reward-related distracters leak into working memory remains unknown.

A pilot randomized trial of a dual n-back emotional working memory training program for veterans with elevated PTSD symptoms.

Anxiety is characterized by excessive attention to threatening information, leading to impaired working memory (WM) performance and elevated anxious thoughts. Preliminary research indicates that individuals with PTSD show particular difficulty with WM in emotional contexts (Schweizer et al., 2011).