Overview
- The Hospital Clínic of Barcelona team presented the findings at the 38th ECNP Congress in Amsterdam, focusing on a population often overlooked in PTSD brain research.
- Resting-state fMRI of 40 women within a year of assault, compared with matched controls, showed near-zero amygdala–prefrontal connectivity in 22 participants.
- The measured connectivity loss did not directly track the severity of PTSD or depressive symptoms reported by participants.
- An independent neuroscientist characterized the fronto‑limbic dysconnectivity as profound, underscoring circuit-level disruption in emotional regulation networks after trauma.
- The researchers plan follow-up studies to test whether these connectivity patterns predict who benefits from treatment, emphasizing the need for larger longitudinal cohorts.