Structural features of amygdala subnuclei in PTSD using ultra-high field imaging
Poster No:
409
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Elizabeth Haris1, Trevor Steward1, Kim Felmingham1, Ben Harrison1, Christopher Davey1, Bradford Moffat1, Rebecca Glarin1, Richard Bryant2, Mayuresh Korgaonkar3
Institutions:
1University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 2University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 3Westmead institute, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
The amygdala is a subcortical brain structure involved in threat processing and implicated in various psychopathology (Ressler et al., 2022). Previous efforts to map amygdala subnuclei connectivity have been hindered by technological limitations (Haris et al., 2023). This study used ultra-high field imaging to investigate the covariance profiles of amygdala subnuclei to better understand their contribution to trauma-related psychopathology and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Methods:
Participants included 59 non-trauma-exposed controls (NEC; 51% female), 78 trauma-exposed controls (TEC; 65% female), and 73 individuals with PTSD (93% female) who completed T1-weighted MP2RAGE anatomical scans using a 7-Tesla MRI scanner. FreeSurfer (Fischl, 2012) was used to parcellate 105 brain regions including nine bilateral amygdala subnuclei. Pearson's r correlations were computed for each subnuclei-brain region pair, corrected for age, sex, education, and total brain volume. Gray matter volumes, topological connectivity (nodal degree) using graph analysis (Hosseini et al., 2012), and subnuclei-brain region covariances were compared between-groups.
Results:
There were between-group volumetric differences for the lateral nuclei (left: NEC<PTSD/TEC; right: PTSD<NEC/TEC), and higher nodal degree of the right paralaminar subnucleus for TEC (vs NEC). Covariance patterns differed between-groups, with lower PTSD (vs NEC) structural covariances for left cortical and central nuclei, and higher TEC (vs NEC) covariances for left lateral, basal, cortical, and anterior-amygdaloid-area, right cortico-amygdaloid transition, and bilateral paralaminar nuclei (below figure). No covariance differences were found between NEC and TEC groups.
Conclusions:
This study is the first to reveal differences in amygdala subnuclei covariance profiles along the trauma-spectrum using ultra-high field imaging. Findings suggest that amygdala subnuclei could have differential connectivity profiles in trauma-related conditions and ultra-high field imaging studies are needed to more precisely understand their role.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural)
Neuroanatomy, Physiology, Metabolism and Neurotransmission:
Subcortical Structures 2
Keywords:
HIGH FIELD MR
Psychiatric Disorders
STRUCTURAL MRI
Sub-Cortical
Trauma
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Provide references using APA citation style.
Haris, E.M., et al. (2023). Functional connectivity of amygdala subnuclei in PTSD: a narrative review. Molecular Psychiatry, 28(9):3581-94.
Hosseini, S.M.H., et al. (2012). GAT: A Graph-Theoretical Analysis Toolbox for analyzing between-group differences in large-scale structural and functional brain networks. PLoS One, 7(7):e40709.
Ressler, K.J., et al. (2022). Post-traumatic stress disorder: clinical and translational neuroscience from cells to circuits. Nature Reviews Neurology, 18(5):273-88.