ArticleTranslational psychiatry2017
Military deployment correlates with smaller prefrontal gray matter volume and psychological symptoms in a subclinical population.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- A whole-brain voxel-based analysis of structural abnormalities in PTSD: An ENIGMA-PGC study.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Pooled it
- Coordinating Global Multi-Site Studies of Military-Relevant Traumatic Brain Injury: Opportunities, Challenges, and Harmonization Guidelines.Brain imaging and behavior · 2021Pooled it
- Psychological distress across the deployment cycle: comparing pre- and peri-pandemic trajectories.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Transcendent thinking counteracts longitudinal effects of mid-adolescent exposure to community violence in the anterior cingulate cortex.Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence · 2025Article
- Sleep Quality Disturbances Are Associated with White Matter Alterations in Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Association of War Zone-Related Stress With Alterations in Limbic Gray Matter Microstructure.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Brain correlates of depression, post-traumatic distress, and inflammatory biomarkers in COVID-19 survivors: A multimodal magnetic resonance imaging study.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2021Article
- The brain at war: effects of stress on brain structure in soldiers deployed to a war zone.Translational psychiatry · 2021Article
- Distinct cortical thickness correlates of early life trauma exposure and posttraumatic stress disorder are shared among adolescent and adult females with interpersonal violence exposure.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Article
- Effect of HIV and Interpersonal Trauma on Cortical Thickness, Cognition, and Daily Functioning.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2020Article
- Trauma, treatment and Tetris: video gaming increases hippocampal volume in male patients with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2020Article
- Keeping in Touch with Mental Health: The Orienting Reflex and Behavioral Outcomes from Calatonia.Brain sciences · 2020Review
- Combat exposure, posttraumatic stress disorder, and head injuries differentially relate to alterations in cortical thickness in military Veterans.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Altered White Matter Diffusivity of the Cingulum Angular Bundle in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.Molecular neuropsychiatry · 2018Article
- Community violence exposure correlates with smaller gray matter volume and lower IQ in urban adolescents.Human brain mapping · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research investigating the effects of trauma exposure on brain structure and function in adults has mainly focused on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whereas trauma-exposed individuals without a clinical diagnoses often serve as controls. However, this assumes a dichotomy between clinical and subclinical populations that may not be supported at the neural level. In the current study we investigate whether the effects of repeated or long-term stress exposure on brain structure in a subclinical sample are similar to previous PTSD neuroimaging findings. We assessed 27 combat trauma-exposed individuals by means of whole-brain voxel-based morphometry on 3 T magnetic resonance imaging scans and identified a negative association between duration of military deployment and gray matter volumes in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We also found a negative relationship between deployment-related gray matter volumes and psychological symptoms, but not between military deployment and psychological symptoms. To our knowledge, this is the first whole-brain analysis showing that longer military deployment is associated with smaller regional brain volumes in combat-exposed individuals without PTSD. Notably, the observed gray matter associations resemble those previously identified in PTSD populations, and concern regions involved in emotional regulation and fear extinction. These findings question the current dichotomy between clinical and subclinical populations in PTSD neuroimaging research. Instead, neural correlates of both stress exposure and PTSD symptomatology may be more meaningfully investigated at a continuous level.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.