ArticleScientific reports2021
Increased medial prefrontal cortical thickness and resilience to traumatic experiences in North Korean refugees.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- History of childhood trauma enhances the detrimental effects of recent stressors on brain structure and function in major depressive disorder.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- Lower Gyrification of the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An ENIGMA-PTSD Study.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- Resting-State Functional Connectivity Changes Associated With Post-Traumatic Stress and Anxiety Symptoms in North Korean Refugees.Psychiatry investigation · 2026Article
- Lower right insular thickness is associated with more severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms among Ukrainian refugees.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Rats Induce Anxiety-Depression-Like Behavior in Offspring: Association with Neuroinflammation and NF-κB Pathway.Molecular neurobiology · 2025Article
- Multimodal neural correlates of dispositional resilience among healthy individuals.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Examining the association between posttraumatic stress disorder and disruptions in cortical networks identified using data-driven methods.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- North Korean defectors with PTSD and complex PTSD show alterations in default mode network resting-state functional connectivity.BJPsych open · 2024Article
- Trauma and the default mode network: review and exploratory study.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Properties of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in North Korean Defectors: A Scoping Review.Psychiatry investigation · 2023Article
- Longitudinal changes in brain structure and their relationship with subclinical psychiatric symptoms in parents who lost their only child in China.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2023Article
- Morphologic alterations of the fear circuitry: the role of sex hormones and oral contraceptives.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2023Article
- Biological Psychiatry in Displaced Populations: What We Know, and What We Need to Begin to Learn.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2022Review
- Study on the changes of Structural Covariance Network in post-traumatic stress disorder.Brain imaging and behavior · 2022Article
- Gray Matter Volume of Thalamic Nuclei in Traumatized North Korean Refugees.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 6 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Little is known regarding structural brain changes in traumatized refugees and the association with psychopathology. In the present study, the cortical thickness in North Korean refugees and the association with psychological symptoms were explored. North Korean refugees with lifetime post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD group, n = 27), trauma-exposed North Korean refugees without lifetime PTSD (trauma-exposed control (TEC) group, n = 23), and healthy South Korean controls without traumatic experiences (HC group, n = 51) completed questionnaires assessing depression, anxiety, somatization, and PTSD symptoms. The cortical thickness was measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using FreeSurfer. Age- and sex-adjusted cortical thickness of the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) was greater in the TEC group than in the HC group. However, significant differences were not observed between the PTSD and HC groups. Increased right mPFC thickness was significantly correlated with less anxiety and somatization after controlling for age and sex in the TEC group, but not in the PTSD or HC groups. North Korean refugees who did not develop PTSD after trauma showed increased right mPFC thickness, which was associated with less severe psychiatric symptoms. These findings indicate that increased mPFC thickness might have helped to reduce PTSD and psychiatric symptoms after trauma, and likely reflects resilience achieved by potentially enhancing emotional regulation in the mPFC.
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