Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Brain Activity During Viewing Images of Different Affective Valences in Women with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from Sexual Abuse Compared to the Control Group.

• Grant number: 24/15808-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Psychiatry
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Feijó de Mello
• Grantee: Laura Pinto Felippe
• Host Institution: Instituto Israelita de Ensino e Pesquisa Albert Einstein (IIEPAE). Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Brasileira Albert Einstein (SBIBAE). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Approximately 10% of individuals who experience a situation of risk to their integrity, such as kidnapping, earthquake, car accident, and rape, develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many neuroscientific studies in areas such as immunology, metabolism, epigenetics, endocrinology, and brain imaging tried to highlight the neurobiology of PTSD. This study seeks to elucidate better the pathophysiology of PTSD and its mechanisms in neurocircuitry based on the use of data already collected in another thematic project already carried out and which was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Federal University of São Paulo. (FAPESP, 2014/12559-5, CAAE: 30332214.8.0000.5505). The data to be studied are the brain activity of women with PTSD resulting from rape through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) when they are exposed to figures with negative, neutral and positive valences, taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) - a set of photographic images that evoke human emotions by representing various events and objects present in the human experience -, compared to brain activity, also by fMRI images, of women with no history of sexual abuse and without a previous or current psychiatric diagnosis, to then check for differences in brain activity between these two groups. This study aims to understand better the brain regions involved in PTSD through fMRI, something that has not yet been explored in the literature. More than that, to evaluate these brain activations in a specific type of trauma: rape, and a short time interval between the traumatic event and the neuroimaging evaluation - less than a year - when the disorder has not yet become chronic. The importance of this study is to study a highly prevalent disorder in a group with a high potential for developing the disorder employing fMRI in the first year after trauma to fill gaps in the current literature and, consequently, corroborate the advancement of the study of PTSD.