Department of Radiology, Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), West China Hospital of Sichuan University, China.
J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2013 Nov;38(6):381-7. doi: 10.1503/jpn.120244.
Stress responses have been studied extensively in animal models, but effects of major life stress on the human brain remain poorly understood. The aim of this study was to determine whether survivors of a major earthquake, who were presumed to have experienced extreme emotional stress during the disaster, demonstrate differences in brain anatomy relative to individuals who have not experienced such stressors.
Healthy survivors living in an area devastated by a major earthquake and matched healthy controls underwent 3-dimentional high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Survivors were scanned 13-25 days after the earthquake; controls had undergone MRI for other studies not long before the earthquake. We used optimized voxel-based morphometry analysis to identify regional differences of grey matter volume between the survivors and controls.
We included 44 survivors (17 female, mean age 37 [standard deviation (SD) 10.6] yr) and 38 controls (14 female, mean age 35.3 [SD 11.2] yr) in our analysis. Compared with controls, the survivors showed significantly lower grey matter volume in the bilateral insula, hippocampus, left caudate and putamen, and greater grey matter volume in the bilateral orbitofrontal cortex and the parietal lobe (all p < 0.05, corrected for multiple comparison).
Differences in the variance of survivor and control data could impact study findings.
Acute anatomic alterations could be observed in earthquake survivors in brain regions where functional alterations after stress have been described. Anatomic changes in the present study were observed earlier than previously reported and were seen in prefrontal-limbic, parietal and striatal brain systems. Together with the results of previous functional imaging studies, our observations suggest a complex pattern of human brain response to major life stress affecting brain systems that modulate and respond to heightened affective arousal.
人们对动物模型中的应激反应进行了广泛研究，但人们对重大生活压力对人类大脑的影响仍知之甚少。本研究旨在确定经历过重大地震的幸存者是否在大脑解剖结构上与未经历过此类应激源的个体存在差异，这些幸存者据推测在灾难期间经历了极度的情绪压力。
居住在被一场大地震摧毁的地区的健康幸存者和相匹配的健康对照组接受了三维高分辨率磁共振成像（MRI）检查。幸存者在地震后 13-25 天进行扫描；对照组在地震前不久因其他研究进行了 MRI 检查。我们使用优化的体素形态计量学分析来确定幸存者和对照组之间灰质体积的区域差异。
我们对 44 名幸存者（17 名女性，平均年龄 37 [标准差 10.6] 岁）和 38 名对照组（14 名女性，平均年龄 35.3 [标准差 11.2] 岁）进行了分析。与对照组相比，幸存者双侧岛叶、海马体、左侧尾状核和壳核的灰质体积明显较低，双侧眶额皮质和顶叶的灰质体积较大（所有 P<0.05，经多重比较校正）。
幸存者和对照组数据方差的差异可能会影响研究结果。
在经历过应激的大脑区域，可观察到地震幸存者的急性解剖结构改变。与之前报道的相比，本研究观察到的解剖结构改变更早，并且发生在前额叶-边缘、顶叶和纹状体脑系统中。结合之前的功能影像学研究结果，我们的观察结果表明，人类大脑对重大生活压力的反应存在复杂模式，影响调节和应对情绪唤醒增加的大脑系统。
