Publications (2)15.06 Total impact
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Article: High responsivity to threat during the initial stage of perception in repression: a 3 T fMRI study.
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ABSTRACT: Repression designates coping strategies such as avoidance, or denial that aim to shield the organism from threatening stimuli. Derakshan et al. have proposed the vigilance-avoidance theory of repressive coping. It is assumed that repressors have an initial rapid vigilant response triggering physiological responses to threat stimuli. In the following second stage repressors manifest avoidant cognitive biases. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T was used to study neural correlates of repressive coping during the first stages of perception of threat. Pictures of human faces bearing fearful, angry, happy and neutral expressions were briefly presented masked by neutral faces. Forty study participants (20 repressive and 20 sensitizing individuals) were selected from a sample of 150 female students on the basis of their scores on the Mainz Coping Inventory. Repressors exhibited stronger neural activation than sensitizers primarily in response to masked threatening faces (vs neutral baseline) in the frontal, parietal and temporal cortex as well as in the cingulate gyrus, basal ganglia and insula. There was no brain region in which sensitizers showed increased activation to emotion expression compared to repressors. The present results are in line with the vigilance-avoidance theory which predicts heightened automatic responsivity to threatening stimuli in repression.Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 12/2011; · 6.13 Impact Factor -
Article: Limbic scars: long-term consequences of childhood maltreatment revealed by functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging.
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ABSTRACT: Childhood maltreatment represents a strong risk factor for the development of depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in later life. In the present study, we investigated the neurobiological underpinnings of this association. Since both depression and PTSD have been associated with increased amygdala responsiveness to negative stimuli as well as reduced hippocampal gray matter volume, we speculated that childhood maltreatment results in similar functional and structural alterations in previously maltreated but healthy adults. One hundred forty-eight healthy subjects were enrolled via public notices and newspaper announcements and were carefully screened for psychiatric disorders. Amygdala responsiveness was measured by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging and an emotional face-matching paradigm particularly designed to activate the amygdala in response to threat-related faces. Voxel-based morphometry was used to study morphological alterations. Childhood maltreatment was assessed by the 25-item Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). We observed a strong association of CTQ scores with amygdala responsiveness to threat-related facial expressions. The morphometric analysis yielded reduced gray matter volumes in the hippocampus, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, and caudate in subjects with high CTQ scores. Both of these associations were not influenced by trait anxiety, depression level, age, intelligence, education, or more recent stressful life events. Childhood maltreatment is associated with remarkable functional and structural changes even decades later in adulthood. These changes strongly resemble findings described in depression and PTSD. Therefore, the present results might suggest that limbic hyperresponsiveness and reduced hippocampal volumes could be mediators between the experiences of adversities during childhood and the development of emotional disorders.Biological psychiatry 11/2011; 71(4):286-93. · 8.93 Impact Factor
