Neuroimaging Correlates of Suicidality in Decision-Making Circuits in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Frontiers in Psychiatry

Emily Aiken¹  Mascha van 't Wout-Frank²  Jennifer Barredo²  Linda L. Carpenter³  Benjamin D. Greenberg³  Noah S. Philip³ 

[1] Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, Providence VA Medical Center, Providence, RI, United States;Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, United States;Neuromodulation Research Facility, Butler Hospital Providence, Providence, RI, United States;

关键词: suicide;    neuroimaging;    functional connectivity;    morphometry;    decision-making;    cognitive control;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00044

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In depression, brain and behavioral correlates of decision-making differ between individuals with and without suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Though promising, it remains unknown if these potential biomarkers of suicidality will generalize to other high-risk clinical populations. To preliminarily assess whether brain structure or function tracked suicidality in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we measured resting-state functional connectivity and cortical thickness in two functional networks involved in decision-making, a ventral fronto-striatal reward network and a lateral frontal cognitive control network. Neuroimaging data and self-reported suicidality ratings, and suicide-related hospitalization data were obtained from 50 outpatients with PTSD and also from 15 healthy controls, and all were subjected to seed-based resting-state functional connectivity and cortical thickness analyses using a priori seeds from reward and cognitive control networks. First, general linear models (GLM) were used to evaluate whether ROI-to-ROI functional connectivity was predictive of self-reported suicidality after false discovery rate (FDR)-correction for multiple comparisons and covariance of age and depression symptoms. Next, regional cortical thickness statistics were included as predictors of ROI-to-ROI functional connectivity in follow-up GLMs evaluating structure-function relationships. Functional connectivity between reward regions was positively correlated with suicidality (p-FDR ≤ 0.05). Functional connectivity of the lateral pars orbitalis to anterior cingulate/paracingulate control regions also tracked suicidality (p-FDR ≤ 0.05). Furthermore, cortical thickness in anterior cingulate/paracingulate was associated with functional correlates of suicidality in the control network (p-FDR < 0.05). These results provide a preliminary demonstration that biomarkers of suicidality in decision-making networks observed in depression may generalize to PTSD and highlight the promise of these circuits as transdiagnostic biomarkers of suicidality.

【 授权许可】

Unknown