Objective: Childhood sexual abuse is the leading cause of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in women, and is a prominent cause of morbidity and loss of function for which limited treatments are available. Understanding the neurobiology of treatment response is important for developing new treatments. The purpose of this study was to assess neural correlates of personalized traumatic memories in women with childhood sexual abuse with and without PTSD, and to assess response to treatment.
Methods: Women with childhood sexual abuse with (N = 28) and without (N = 17) PTSD underwent brain imaging with High-Resolution Positron Emission Tomography scanning with radiolabeled water for brain blood flow measurements during exposure to personalized traumatic scripts and memory encoding tasks. Women with PTSD were randomized to paroxetine or placebo followed by three months of double-blind treatment and repeat imaging with the same protocol.
Results: Women with PTSD showed decreases in areas involved in the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network of brain areas usually active when the brain is at rest, hippocampus and visual processing areas with exposure to traumatic scripts at baseline while women without PTSD showed increased activation in superior frontal gyrus and other areas (p < 0.005). Treatment of women with PTSD with paroxetine resulted in increased anterior cingulate activation and brain areas involved in the DMN and visual processing with scripts compared to placebo (p < 0.005).
Conclusion: PTSD related to childhood sexual abuse in women is associated with alterations in brain areas involved in memory and the stress response and treatment with paroxetine results in modulation of these areas.