Pirzad Jahromi Gila, Gharaati Sotoudeh Hossein, Mostafaie Romina, Khaleghi Ali
Neuroscience Research Centre, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Roozbeh Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Iran J Psychiatry. 2024 Feb;19(2):238-246. doi: 10.18502/ijps.v19i2.15110.
The lack of steady-state evoked potential (SSEP) studies on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has led to undiscovered useful information about the pathophysiology of the disorder. Thus, we explored SSEP patterns in PTSD patients during a stop-signal task to disclose possible impairments in these informative brain potentials. 25 adult patients with PTSD and 25 healthy adults participated in this research. Subjects were assessed with electroencephalography while the tone signal stimuli at 40 Hz were used to evoke SSEPs and subjects performed a stop-signal task. The amplitude and phase of SSEPs were then computed in different brain regions. The subjects were also evaluated using the Mississippi PTSD questionnaire. Appropriate statistical methods such as repeated measure ANOVA were used to compare the two groups, and the correlation between SSEPs and clinical symptoms was assessed using Pearson correlation analysis. Patients showed considerably poorer performance in the cognitive task (P < 0.01), accompanied by raised SSEP phase and amplitude in the anterior and midline regions compared to healthy controls (P < 0.05). The Mississippi total score was positively correlated with the SSEP amplitude in the midline region (r = 0.62, P < 0.05). Furthermore, based on ROC analysis, the SSEP amplitude in the midline region provided an excellent AUC value (AUC = 0.850) for distinguishing patients with PTSD from normal subjects. Current findings suggest that abnormalities in the anterior and midline cortical neural networks are involved in the pathophysiology of PTSD. Importantly, midline abnormalities may provide a clinically-relevant measure for researchers wishing to assess the use of biomarkers for early diagnosis of PTSD as well as to evaluate new therapeutic and management approaches in the treatment of PTSD.
缺乏关于创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的稳态诱发电位（SSEP）研究，导致该疾病病理生理学方面尚未被发现的有用信息。因此，我们在停止信号任务期间探索了PTSD患者的SSEP模式，以揭示这些信息性脑电位可能存在的损伤。25名成年PTSD患者和25名健康成年人参与了这项研究。在使用40Hz音调信号刺激诱发SSEP且受试者执行停止信号任务时，用脑电图对受试者进行评估。然后计算不同脑区SSEP的振幅和相位。还使用密西西比PTSD问卷对受试者进行评估。使用重复测量方差分析等适当的统计方法比较两组，并使用Pearson相关分析评估SSEP与临床症状之间的相关性。与健康对照组相比，患者在认知任务中的表现明显较差（P<0.01），同时前脑区和中线区域的SSEP相位和振幅升高（P<0.05）。密西西比总分与中线区域的SSEP振幅呈正相关（r=0.62，P<0.05）。此外，基于ROC分析，中线区域的SSEP振幅在区分PTSD患者与正常受试者方面提供了出色的AUC值（AUC=0.850）。目前的研究结果表明，前脑区和中线皮质神经网络的异常参与了PTSD的病理生理学过程。重要的是，中线异常可能为希望评估使用生物标志物进行PTSD早期诊断以及评估PTSD治疗新的治疗和管理方法的研究人员提供一种与临床相关的测量方法。
