@article{ref1,
title="History of childhood maltreatment augments dorsolateral prefrontal processing of emotional valence in PTSD",
journal="Journal of psychiatric research",
year="2015",
author="Fonzo, Gregory A. and Huemer, Julia and Etkin, Amit",
volume="74",
number="",
pages="45-54",
abstract="Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by conflicting findings of both increased and decreased amygdala and prefrontal reactivity to threat or trauma stimuli. Childhood maltreatment (CM), a potent risk factor for PTSD, exerts long-lasting influences on threat processing and prefrontal-amygdala function. This suggests that CM history may influence PTSD neural phenotypes related to threat processing. Here, we adapt a well-characterized emotional conflict paradigm to investigate CM effects on both emotional conflict and emotional valence processing within PTSD stratified by task relevance. Forty-two individuals with PTSD (22 reporting extensive CM history (PTSD-CM)) and 20 trauma-exposed healthy controls (TEHCs) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while identifying affect of emotional faces (fear and happy) overlaid with a goal-irrelevant emotional distractor word (&quot;FEAR&quot; or &quot;HAPPY&quot;). We examined effects of CM on conflict, conflict adaptation, valence-related activation (fear vs. happy) for goal-relevant (face) and goal-irrelevant stimuli (word), and valence effects in interaction with goal-relevancy (face vs. word). Though no activation differences between groups were observed for conflict contrasts nor for valence effects in the amygdala, CM status interacted with valence processing differences as a function of goal relevance in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Here, PTSD-CM displayed greater activation relative to PTSD to negative valence when stimuli were goal-irrelevant. CM history also moderated relationships between activation abnormalities and PTSD re-experiencing symptoms. These findings provide initial evidence that CM history augments dorsolateral prefrontal bias to implicitly processed stimulus valence in PTSD.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0022-3956",
doi="10.1016/j.jpsychires.2015.12.015",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2015.12.015"
}