Neurobehavioral correlates of impaired emotion recognition in pediatric PTSD

• Published in: Development and psychopathology Vol. 34; no. 3; pp. 946 - 956
• Main Authors: Heyn, Sara A., Schmit, Collin, Keding, Taylor J., Wolf, Richard, Herringa, Ryan J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.08.2022
• Subjects: Adolescent; Age; Amygdala; Amygdala - diagnostic imaging; Anger; Attention; Child; Child development; Children & youth; Comorbidity; Emotions; Eye movements; Facial Expression; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Hippocampus; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Neural networks; Neurobiology; Neuroimaging; Pediatrics; Physiology; Post traumatic stress disorder; Psychosocial development; Regular Article; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnostic imaging; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - psychology; Teenagers; Trauma; Visual pathways; Visual perception; adolescent; emotion; posttraumatic stress disorders; functional neuroimaging
• ISSN: 0954-5794; 1469-2198; 1469-2198
• DOI: 10.1017/S0954579420001704

Despite broad evidence suggesting that adversity-exposed youth experience an impaired ability to recognize emotion in others, the underlying biological mechanisms remains elusive. This study uses a multimethod approach to target the neurological substrates of this phenomenon in a well-phenotyped sample of youth meeting diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Twenty-one PTSD-afflicted youth and 23 typically developing (TD) controls completed clinical interview schedules, an emotion recognition task with eye-tracking, and an implicit emotion processing task during functional magnetic resonance imaging )fMRI). PTSD was associated with decreased accuracy in identification of angry, disgust, and neutral faces as compared to TD youth. Of note, these impairments occurred despite the normal deployment of visual attention in youth with PTSD relative to TD youth. Correlation with a related fMRI task revealed a group by accuracy interaction for amygdala–hippocampus functional connectivity (FC) for angry expressions, where TD youth showed a positive relationship between anger accuracy and amygdala–hippocampus FC; this relationship was reversed in youth with PTSD. These findings are a novel characterization of impaired threat recognition within a well-phenotyped population of severe pediatric PTSD. Further, the differential amygdala–hippocampus FC identified in youth with PTSD may imply aberrant efficiency of emotional contextualization circuits.