TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2013//
TI  - Brain structural plasticity in survivors of a major earthquake
JO  - Journal of psychiatry and neuroscience
A1  - Lui, Su
A1  - Chen, Long
A1  - Yao, Li
A1  - Xiao, Yuan
A1  - Wu, Qi-Zhu
A1  - Zhang, Jun-Ran
A1  - Huang, Xiao-Qi
A1  - Zhang, Weigang
A1  - Wang, Yu-Qin
A1  - Chen, Hua-Fu
A1  - Chan, Raymond C. K.
A1  - Sweeney, John A.
A1  - Gong, Qi-Yong
SP  - 120244
EP  - 120244
VL  - 38
IS  - 3
N2  - BACKGROUND: Stress responses have been studied extensively in animal models, but effects of major life stress on the human brain remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to determine whether survivors of a major earthquake, who were presumed to have experienced extreme emotional stress during the disaster, demonstrate differences in brain anatomy relative to individuals who have not experienced such stressors. METHODS: Healthy survivors living in an area devastated by a major earthquake and matched healthy controls underwent 3-dimentional high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Survivors were scanned 13-25 days after the earthquake; controls had undergone MRI for other studies not long before the earthquake. We used optimized voxel-based morphometry analysis to identify regional differences of grey matter volume between the survivors and controls. RESULTS: We included 44 survivors (17 female, mean age 37 [standard deviation (SD) 10.6] yr) and 38 controls (14 female, mean age 35.3 [SD 11.2] yr) in our analysis. Compared with controls, the survivors showed significantly lower grey matter volume in the bilateral insula, hippocampus, left caudate and putamen, and greater grey matter volume in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex and the parietal lobe (all p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparison). LIMITATIONS: Differences in the variance of survivor and control data could impact study findings. CONCLUSION: Acute anatomic alterations could be observed in earthquake survivors in brain regions where functional alterations after stress have been described. Anatomic changes in the present study were observed earlier than previously reported and were seen in prefrontal-limbic, parietaland striatal brain systems. Together with the results of previous functional imaging studies, our observations suggest a complex pattern of human brain response to major life stress affecting brain systems that modulate and respond to heightened affective arousal.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1180-4882
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1503/jpn.120244
ID  - ref1
ER  -