Subliminal Trauma Reminders Impact Neural Processing of Cognitive Control in Adults with Developmental Earthquake Trauma: A Preliminary Report
Publication Date
3-2016
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology
Keywords
Developmental trauma, Cognitive control, Earthquake, Subliminal priming, Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Abstract
Little is known about the effects of developmental trauma on the neural basis of cognitive control among adults who do not have posttraumatic stress disorder. To examine this question, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the effect of subliminal priming with earthquake-related images on attentional control during a Stroop task in survivors of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China (survivor group, survivors were adolescents at the time of the earthquake) and in matched controls (control group). We found that the survivor group showed greater activation in the left ventral anterior cingulate cortex (vACC) and the bilateral parahippocampal gyrus during the congruent versus incongruent condition, as compared to the control group. Depressive symptoms were positively correlated with left vACC activation during the congruent condition. Moreover, psychophysiological interaction results showed that the survivor group had stronger functional connectivity between the left parahippocampal gyrus and the left vACC than the control group under the congruent–incongruent condition. These results suggested that trauma-related information was linked to abnormal activity in brain networks associated with cognitive control (e.g., vACC–parahippocampal gyrus). This may be a potential biomarker for depression following developmental trauma, and it may also provide a mechanism linking trauma reminders with depression.
Copyright Date
12-15-2015
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
All Rights Reserved.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:
Du, X., Li, Y., Ran, Q., Kim, P., Ganzel, B. L., Liang, G., . . ., & Qiu, J. (2016). Subliminal trauma reminders impact neural processing of cognitive control in adults with developmental earthquake trauma: A preliminary report. Experimental Brain Research, 234(3), 905-916. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4502-7
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Rights Holder
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
Provenance
Received from CHORUS
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
12 pgs
File Size
789 KB
Publication Title
Experimental Brain Research
Volume
234
Issue
3
First Page
905
Last Page
916
ISSN
1432-1106
PubMed ID
26670907
Recommended Citation
Du, X., Li, Y., Ran, Q., Kim, P., Ganzel, B. L., Liang, G., . . ., & Qiu, J. (2016). Subliminal trauma reminders impact neural processing of cognitive control in adults with developmental earthquake trauma: A preliminary report. Experimental Brain Research, 234(3), 905-916. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-015-4502-7