ArticleBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging2024
Civilian Moral Injury and Amygdala Functional Connectivity During Attention to Threat.
Article in Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Structure and correlates of the Moral Injury Exposure and Symptom Scale for Civilians (MIESS-C) in a community sample with high trauma exposure.European journal of psychotraumatology · 2026Article
- Resting-State Neural Signatures of Moral Injury: Associations With Rumination.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Moral Injury in the DSM-5-TR: Syndrome Spectrum vs. Categorical Disorder.Journal of religion and health · 2026Article
- The impact of moral injury-related content on reasoning and its neural correlates: Data from the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).Neuroimage. Reports · 2026Article
- Toward a framework of moral challenges in military operations: implications for psychological resilience.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Racial Discrimination-Related Interoceptive Network Disruptions: A Pathway to Disconnection.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2026Article
- Influences of sex and gender on the associations between risk and protective factors, brain, and behavior.Biology of sex differences · 2024Review
- Moral injury, race-related stress and post-traumatic stress disorder in a trauma-exposed Black population.Journal of psychiatric research · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
backgroundMoral injury references emotional and spiritual/existential suffering that may emerge following psychological trauma. Despite being linked to adverse mental health outcomes, little is known about the neurophysiological mechanisms of this phenomenon. In this study, we examined neural correlates of moral injury exposure and distress using the Moral Injury Exposure and Symptom Scale for Civilians. We also examined potential moderation of these effects by race (Black vs. White individuals) given the likely intersection of race-related stress with moral injury.
methodsForty-eight adults ages 18 to 65 years (mean age = 30.56, SD = 11.93) completed the Moral Injury Exposure and Symptom Scale for Civilians and an affective attentional control measure, the affective Stroop task (AS), during functional magnetic resonance imaging; the AS includes presentation of threat-relevant and neutral distractor stimuli. Voxelwise functional connectivity of the bilateral amygdala was examined in response to threat-relevant versus neutral AS distractor trials.
resultsFunctional connectivity between the right amygdala and left postcentral gyrus/primary somatosensory cortex was positively correlated with the Moral Injury Exposure and Symptom Scale for Civilians exposure score (voxelwise p < .001, cluster false discovery rate-corrected p < .05) in response to threat versus neutral AS distractor trials. Follow-up analyses revealed significant effects of race; Black but not White participants demonstrated this significant pattern of amygdala-left somatosensory cortex connectivity.
conclusionsIncreased exposure to potentially morally injurious events may lead to emotion-somatosensory pathway disruptions during attention to threat-relevant stimuli. These effects may be most potent for individuals who have experienced multilayered exposure to morally injurious events, including racial trauma. Moral injury appears to have a distinct neurobiological signature that involves abnormalities in connectivity of emotion-somatosensory paths, which may be amplified by race-related stress.
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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.