2026/06/10 by Chia-Hao Shih, Haitham Elsamaloty, Haitham M. Elsamaloty +6
Psychology · Medicine · Neuroscience · #Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research #Traumatic Brain Injury Research #Memory and Neural Mechanisms
paper · doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2026.112271
Brain activation associated with deficits in fear learning and memory contributes to chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but whether brain activation contributes to PTSD development over early post-trauma periods remains unclear. To provide insight into this issue, the present study longitudinally assessed brain activation to fear acquisition, extinction, and recall tasks during the initial weeks to one year after a traumatic event in survivors who did and did not develop PTSD. Compared to survivors free of PTSD, PTSD survivors had greater activation during fear acquisition tasks in the left dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices (dlPFC and vlPFC), left insula cortex, and right posterior cingulate (PCC) and precuneus cortices at early post-trauma weeks. PTSD survivors also had reduced activation during fear extinction in the right premotor cortex, and greater activation during recall of extinguished fear in the left vlPFC, at early post-trauma weeks. Early post-trauma elevated extinction recall activation in vlPFC and fear acquisition activation in vlPFC and PCC/precuneus may relate to the development of negative alterations of mood and cognition and other symptoms at a year post-trauma across survivors with and without PTSD. Over the subsequent post trauma year, PTSD survivors developed: (1) decreased activation in left vlPFC and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) during fear acquisition, (2) decreased activation in vmPFC associated with acquisition of the safe cue, and (3) increased activation in right sensorimotor cortex during recall of unextinguished fear compared to survivors without PTSD. Changes over time in right sensorimotor cortical activation that were associated with progression of PTSD symptoms were seen in all survivors over the post trauma year. The findings suggest that both early and more progressive alterations in brain activation that associate with fear learning and memory contribute to development of PTSD.