Cited by 103Posttraumatic Stress Disorder ResearchFunctional Brain Connectivity StudiesTraumatic Brain Injury Research

Using fMRI connectivity to define a treatment-resistant form of post-traumatic stress disorder

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Etkin, Amit, Maron-Katz, Adi, Wu, Wei, Fonzo, Gregory A., Huemer, Julia, Vértes, Petra E., Patenaude, Brian, Richiardi, Jonas +34 more·2019·Science Translational Medicine

Abstract

A mechanistic understanding of the pathology of psychiatric disorders has been hampered by extensive heterogeneity in biology, symptoms, and behavior within diagnostic categories that are defined subjectively. We investigated whether leveraging individual differences in information-processing impairments in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could reveal phenotypes within the disorder. We found that a subgroup of patients with PTSD from two independent cohorts displayed both aberrant functional connectivity within the ventral attention network (VAN) as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neuroimaging and impaired verbal memory on a word list learning task. This combined phenotype was not associated with differences in symptoms or comorbidities, but nonetheless could be used to predict a poor response to psychotherapy, the best-validated treatment for PTSD. Using concurrent focal noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography, we then identified alterations in neural signal flow in the VAN that were evoked by direct stimulation of that network. These alterations were associated with individual differences in functional fMRI connectivity within the VAN. Our findings define specific neurobiological mechanisms in a subgroup of patients with PTSD that could contribute to the poor response to psychotherapy.

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  • Combining psychotherapy with existing anxiety medication treatment does not seem to provide consistently superior benefits across anxiety disorders, but may be useful for those patient groups that do not adequately respond to CBT alone.

    “This approach, however, does not seem to provide consistently superior benefits across anxiety disorders, but may be useful for those patient groups that do not adequately respond to CBT alone (Etkin et al., 2019;Tolin, 2017).”

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Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [1]APA, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Press, ed. 4, 1994).
  2. [39]IOM, Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An Assessment of the Evidence (The National Academies Press, 2008).
  3. [80]Foa EB, Hembree EA, Rothbaum BO, Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD (Oxford Univ. Press, ed. 1, 2007).

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Authors
Etkin, A., Maron-Katz, A., Wu, W., Fonzo, G. A., Huemer, J., Vértes, P. E., Patenaude, B., Richiardi, J., Goodkind, M. S., Keller, C. J., Ramos-Cejudo, J., Zaiko, Y. V., Peng, K. K., Shpigel, E., Longwell, P., Toll, R. T., Thompson, A., Zack, S., Gonzalez, B., Edelstein, R., Chen, J., Akingbade, I., Weiss, E., Hart, R., Mann, S., Durkin, K., Baete, S. H., Boada, F. E., Genfi, A., Autea, J., Newman, J., Oathes, D. J., Lindley, S. E., Abu-Amara, D., Arnow, B. A., Crossley, N., Hallmayer, J., Fossati, S., Rothbaum, B. O., Marmar, C. R., Bullmore, E. T., & O’Hara, R.
Affiliations
  • VA Palo Alto Health Care System (US)
  • Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94304, USA.
  • Queen Mary University of London (GB)
  • Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CH)
  • University of New Mexico (US)
  • Steven and Alexandra Cohen Veterans Center for Post-traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury, New York University Langone School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
  • Stanford University (US)
  • NYU Langone Health (US)
  • University of Pennsylvania (US)
  • Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (CL)
  • Emory University (US)
  • GlaxoSmithKline (United Kingdom) (GB)
Corresponding author
  • Etkin, Amit
  • Wu, Wei
  • Fonzo, Gregory A.
  • Huemer, Julia
  • Vértes, Petra E.
Venue
Science Translational Medicine
Published
2019-04-03
Volume
11
Issue
486
ISSN
  • 1946-6234 (ISSN-L)
  • 1946-6242
OpenAlex
W2928294493
Cited by
103
References
93
Citations by year
2026: 10 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 9
FWCI
17.23
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Science Translational Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • IRIS (submittedVersion)
  • Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion)
  • Queen Mary Research Online (Queen Mary University of London) (submittedVersion)
  • SERVAL (Université de Lausanne) (submittedVersion)
  • Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion)
  • Apollo
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (R01 MH091860, T32 MH019938)
  • Medical Research Council (MR/K020706/1)
  • National Science Foundation (DGE-1147470)
  • National Key Research and Development Plan of China (2017YFB1002505)
  • Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Foundation
  • funds from Ann and Peter Tarlton
  • Sierra-Pacific Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the Palo Alto VA
  • Cohen Veterans Bioscience
  • Office of Academic Affiliations, Advanced Fellowship Program in Mental Illness Research and Treatment, Department of Veterans Affairs
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Traumatic Brain Injury Research
Keywords
post-traumatic stress disorder, treatment-resistant PTSD, functional connectivity, ventral attention network, verbal memory impairment, word list learning, transcranial magnetic stimulation, EEG, individual differences, phenotypes
MeSH terms
Attention, Behavior, Brain Mapping, Electroencephalography, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Nerve Net, Mental Recall, Rest, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Comorbidity, Treatment Outcome, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

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