Evidence map›Paper›PMID 34480013›Full record

ArticleTranslational psychiatry2021

Neural correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation in traumatized North Korean refugees.

Kyung Hwa Lee, Ha Young Lee, Inkyung Park, Yu Jin Lee, Nambeom Kim, Sehyun Jeon, Soohyun Kim, Jeong Eun Jeon, Seog Ju Kim

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Translational psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
8citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
1.6field-weighted citation impact, top 15% of its field
1 · What the graph read from 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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
  3. Article
  4. What happened matters: Trauma type and cumulative trauma exposure in refugee youth psychopathology.Psychological trauma : theory, research, practice and policy · 2025
    Article
  5. Review
  6. Article
  7. Review
  8. Biological Psychiatry in Displaced Populations: What We Know, and What We Need to Begin to Learn.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2022
    Review
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

9 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.

Kyung Hwa LeeDepartment of Psychiatry and Center for Sleep and Chronobiology, Seoul National University, College of Medicine and Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.ORCID 0000-0002-6168-5432
Ha Young LeeDepartment of Psychiatry and Center for Sleep and Chronobiology, Seoul National University, College of Medicine and Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Inkyung ParkDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA.
Yu Jin LeeDepartment of Psychiatry and Center for Sleep and Chronobiology, Seoul National University, College of Medicine and Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Nambeom KimNeuroscience Research Institute, Gachon University, Incheon, Republic of Korea.
Sehyun JeonDepartment of Psychiatry, Korea University Anam Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Soohyun KimDepartment of Neurology, Gangneung Asan Hospital, Gangwon-do, Republic of Korea.
Jeong Eun JeonDepartment of Psychiatry and Center for Sleep and Chronobiology, Seoul National University, College of Medicine and Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.ORCID 0000-0002-1723-0123
Seog Ju KimDepartment of Psychiatry, Sungkyunkwan University College of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea. ksj7126@skku.edu.ORCID 0000-0003-2467-5451
Seoul National University Hospital · KRSamsung Medical Center · KRGachon University · KRKorea University · KRUniversity of Iowa · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Refugees often report heightened emotional reactivity and emotion regulation difficulties and are at high risk for mental health problems. Given that refugees are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events that may cause changes in the brain, the present study examined neural correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation and their associations with refugee features (e.g., cumulative trauma) and the severity of psychiatric symptoms (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]) in North Korean (NK) refugees. Forty NK refugees with trauma exposure and varying levels of psychopathology and 41 healthy South Korean (SK) controls without trauma exposure participated in this study. They performed an emotion regulation task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) assessment. Region of interest (ROI), whole brain, and generalized psychophysiological interaction (gPPI) analyses were conducted. NK refugees with trauma exposure and varying levels of psychopathology showed increased activation in response to negative socio-affective pictures in regions involved in affective processing, including the amygdala and hippocampus, relative to healthy SK controls without trauma exposure. They also exhibited greater prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation, amygdala-PFC functional connectivity (FC), and hippocampal-PFC FC during emotion regulation. More severe PTSD symptoms were associated with greater hippocampal response to negative pictures (vs. neutral pictures) in NK refugees. This study provides neuroscientific evidence for neural alterations in association with emotional reactivity and regulation in traumatized refugees. These findings may contribute to a better mechanistic understanding of emotional reactivity and regulation in refugees and suggest potential ways to address the emotional and mental problems of traumatized refugees.

Indexed as

RefugeesStress Disorders, Post-TraumaticAmygdalaEmotionsHumansMagnetic Resonance ImagingRepublic of Korea

Identifiers

PMID34480013
PMCPMC8417257
OpenAlexW3198823968

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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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.