Citation

Long J, Huang X, Liao Y, Hu X, Hu J, Lui S, Zhang R, Li Y, Gong Q. Sci. Rep. 2014; 4: 6423.

Affiliation

Huaxi MR Research Center, Department of Radiology, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/srep06423

PMID

25236674

Abstract

Neurobiological markers of stress symptom progression for healthy survivors from a disaster (e.g., an earthquake) would greatly help with early intervention to prevent the development of stress-related disorders. However, the relationship between the neurobiological alterations and the symptom progression over time is unclear. Here, we examined 44 healthy survivors of the Wenchuan earthquake in China in a longitudinal resting-state fMRI study to observe the alterations of brain functions related to depressive or anxiety symptom progression. Using multi-variate pattern analysis to the fMRI data, we successfully predicted the depressive or anxiety symptom severity for these survivors in short- (25 days) and long-term (2 years) and the symptom severity changes over time. Several brain areas (e.g., the frontolimbic and striatal areas) and the functional connectivities located within the fronto-striato-thalamic and default-mode networks were found to be correlated with the symptom progression and might play important roles in the adaptation to trauma.

Language: en