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CHICAGO, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers using functional MRI (fMRI) have determined that the circuitry in the area of the brain responsible for suppressing memory is dysfunctional in patients suffering from stress-related psychiatric disorders. Results of the study will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
"For patients with major depression and other stress-related disorders,
traumatic memories are a source of anxiety," said Nivedita Agarwal, M.D.,
radiology resident at the University of Udine in Italy, where the study is
being conducted, and research fellow at the Brain Imaging Center of McLean
Hospital, Department of Psychiatry at
Dr. Agarwal and colleagues used brain fMRI to explore alterations in the neural circuitry that links the prefrontal cortex to the hippocampus, while study participants performed a memory task. Participants included 11 patients with major depression, 13 with generalized anxiety disorder, nine with panic attack disorders, five with borderline personality disorder and 21 healthy individuals. All patients reported suffering varying degrees of stressful traumatic events, such as sexual or physical abuse, difficult relationships or "mobbing" - a type of bullying or harassment - at some point in their lives.
After reviewing a list of neutral word pairs, each participant underwent fMRI. During imaging, they were presented with one of the words and asked to either recall or to suppress the memory of its associated word.
The fMRI images revealed that the prefrontal cortex, which controls the
suppression and retrieval of memories processed by the hippocampus, showed
abnormal activation in the patients with stress-related disorders
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