ArticleMolecular psychiatry2021
Cortical volume abnormalities in posttraumatic stress disorder: an ENIGMA-psychiatric genomics consortium PTSD workgroup mega-analysis.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 93 citations in OpenAlex.
- Structural Covariance of Early Visual Cortex Is Negatively Associated With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms: A Mega-Analysis From the ENIGMA PTSD Working Group.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Pooled it
- 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
- Functional brain changes after alternative pharmacological interventions in posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review of clinical trials.Brain and behavior · 2023Pooled it
- Country-level gender inequality is associated with structural differences in the brains of women and men.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Pooled it
- Network Centrality and Modularity of Structural Covariance Networks in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Multisite ENIGMA-PGC Study.Brain connectivity · 2023Pooled it
- Remodeling of the Cortical Structural Connectome in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Results From the ENIGMA-PGC Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Consortium.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2022Pooled it
- Does trauma-focused psychotherapy change the brain? A systematic review of neural correlates of therapeutic gains in PTSD.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2021Pooled it
- Connectivity patterns in the DMN that are impacted by traumatic stress.Research square · 2026Article
- Reduced Gray-White Matter Contrast in Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in World Trade Center Responders.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Lower Gyrification of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An ENIGMA-PTSD Study.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Cerebral small vessel disease moderates the association between executive dysfunction and spontaneous neural activity in adults who lost their only child.BMC medical imaging · 2026Article
- Using in vivo MRI to reveal circuits that are sensitive to traumatic stress in male and female rats.Neuropharmacology · 2025Article
- MRI signature of brain age underlying post-traumatic stress disorder in World Trade Center responders.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- The overlapping genetic architecture of psychiatric disorders and cortical brain structure.Nature. Mental health · 2025Article
- The Left Insula Bridges Cognition, Emotion, and Brain Structure: A Multilayer Network Analysis of the Human Connectome Project-Young Adult.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Stress-Related Brain Alterations in Chronic Pain.European journal of pain (London, England) · 2025Article
- Neuroimaging-based variability in subtyping biomarkers for psychiatric heterogeneity.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts on STRESS, PTSD, and Prefrontal Cortical Thickness in Pre-Pandemic Trauma Survivors.Journal of personalized medicine · 2025Article
- Post-traumatic stress disorder: evolving conceptualization and evidence, and future research directions.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2025Article
- Macroscale connectome topographical structure reveals the biomechanisms of brain dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease.Science advances · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
97 authors at 20 institutions in 11 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Studies of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) report volume abnormalities in multiple regions of the cerebral cortex. However, findings for many regions, particularly regions outside commonly studied emotion-related prefrontal, insular, and limbic regions, are inconsistent and tentative. Also, few studies address the possibility that PTSD abnormalities may be confounded by comorbid depression. A mega-analysis investigating all cortical regions in a large sample of PTSD and control subjects can potentially provide new insight into these issues. Given this perspective, our group aggregated regional volumes data of 68 cortical regions across both hemispheres from 1379 PTSD patients to 2192 controls without PTSD after data were processed by 32 international laboratories using ENIGMA standardized procedures. We examined whether regional cortical volumes were different in PTSD vs. controls, were associated with posttraumatic stress symptom (PTSS) severity, or were affected by comorbid depression. Volumes of left and right lateral orbitofrontal gyri (LOFG), left superior temporal gyrus, and right insular, lingual and superior parietal gyri were significantly smaller, on average, in PTSD patients than controls (standardized coefficients = -0.111 to -0.068, FDR corrected P values < 0.039) and were significantly negatively correlated with PTSS severity. After adjusting for depression symptoms, the PTSD findings in left and right LOFG remained significant. These findings indicate that cortical volumes in PTSD patients are smaller in prefrontal regulatory regions, as well as in broader emotion and sensory processing cortical regions.
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