Academic Journal
The brain at war: effects of stress on brain structure in soldiers deployed to a war zone
| Title: | The brain at war: effects of stress on brain structure in soldiers deployed to a war zone |
|---|---|
| Authors: | Simone Kühn, Oisin Butler, Gerd Willmund, Ulrich Wesemann, Peter Zimmermann, Jürgen Gallinat |
| Source: | Transl Psychiatry Translational Psychiatry, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2021) Translational Psychiatry |
| Publisher Information: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2021. |
| Publication Year: | 2021 |
| Subject Terms: | 0301 basic medicine, Military Personnel [MeSH], Article, Brain/diagnostic imaging [MeSH], Neuroscience, Prefrontal Cortex/diagnostic imaging [MeSH], Humans [MeSH], Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic [MeSH], Cross-Sectional Studies [MeSH], Pathogenesis, Brain, Prefrontal Cortex, Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry, 16. Peace & justice, 3. Good health, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, 03 medical and health sciences, Cross-Sectional Studies, Military Personnel, 0302 clinical medicine, Humans, RC321-571 |
| Description: | In search of the neural basis of severe trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a multitude of cross-sectional studies have been conducted, most of them pointing at structural deficits in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Since cross-sectional studies are silent to causality, the core question remains: which brain structural alterations constitute a risk factor for disease and therewith precede the stressor, and which brain regions may undergo alterations as a consequence of exposure to the stressor. We assessed 121 soldiers before and after deployment to regions of war and 40 soldiers as controls, who were not deployed. Analysis using voxel-based morphometry revealed volumetric reductions in the ACC, vmPFC (region of interest analysis, effect does not survive conservative multiple test correction) and in bilateral thalamus (whole-brain analysis) in the deployment group. Remarkably, the ACC and vmPFC volume decrease was not limited to the period of deployment, but continued over the following 6 months after deployment. Volumetric reductions did not correlate with increases in PTSD symptoms. The volume decreases in medial prefrontal cortex and thalamus seem to be driven by trauma exposure rather than a vulnerability factor for PTSD. However, data indicate that the volume decrease in medial prefrontal cortex surpasses the time period of deployment. This may hint at an initiated pathobiological process below a symptom threshold, potentially paving the way to future mental health problems. |
| Document Type: | Article Other literature type |
| File Description: | application/pdf |
| Language: | English |
| ISSN: | 2158-3188 |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41398-021-01356-0 |
| Access URL: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01356-0.pdf https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33903597 https://doaj.org/article/03a985372c2340fb852812f45cf5e26e https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_3293093_7/component/file_3316858/s41398-021-01356-0.pdf https://europepmc.org/article/MED/33903597 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01356-0 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8076198 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01356-0.pdf http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0008-2BF5-4 http://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0008-6EA9-F https://repository.publisso.de/resource/frl:6442518 |
| Rights: | CC BY URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
| Accession Number: | edsair.doi.dedup.....29161a3fd8e277436195d53b51cd3374 |
| Database: | OpenAIRE |
| ISSN: | 21583188 |
|---|---|
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41398-021-01356-0 |