Abstract
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients with histories of cocaine and alcohol abuse (CA-PTSD) were compared with normal volunteers. Positron emission tomography (PET) scans with ISO-butanol were used to compare regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) between the groups during rest and during an auditory continuous performance task (ACPT). CA-PTSD patients had significantly higher rCBF in right amygdala and left parahippocampal gyrus than normals during the ACPT. Normals had higher rCBF at frontal cortex during the resting scan and during the ACPT. The role of the amygdala in attention and fear conditioning suggests that increased amygdala rCBF may be related to clinical features ofPTSD. Cocaine use may be associated with increased amygdala rCBF in PTSD patients. Amygdala and frontal cortex attention system components may be reciprocally related and their relative contributions to processing of neutral stimuli perturbed in CA-PTSD.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 65-74 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Psychiatry (New York) |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2000 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:are with the Department of Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH; and the Louis B. Stokes Veterans Administration Medical Center at Cleveland, Brecksville, OH. Peter F. Goyer, MD, is with the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Radiology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH; the Louis B. Stokes Veterans Administration Medical Center at Cleveland, Brecksville, OR. Beverly Donovan, PhD, Kevan McCutcheon, PhD, Colleen Lewis, BA, and Ken Vapenik, BA, are with the Louis B. Stokes Veterans Administration Medical Center at Cleveland, Brecksville, OH. Raymond F. Muzic,Jr., PhD, is with the Department of Radiology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH. Lorccn RugJc, PhD, is with Tirmeridian, Inc., Indianapolis, IN. Sean Kowaltw, BA, and S. Charles Schulz, MD, are with the Department o£Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH. Mary Ann Semple, BS, is with Vatastat Graphics Consulting, Ind., Brecksville, OH. This study was supported by National Institute on Drug Abuse Grant ROl DA10207 to Dr. Semple. The authors thank Marc Berridge, PhD, Flo Miraldi, MD, Dennis Nelson, PhD, Gary Muswick, Kim Stromple, Gus Kraus, Arlene Kellon, and Greg Leisure for technical and clinical assistance. Address correspondence to William E. Semple, PhD, Louis Stokes Veterans Administration Medical Center at Cleveland (lIB), 10000 Brecksville Rd., Brecksville, OH 44141; phone: 440-546-2773 or 440-526-3030, ext. 6970; fax: 440-546-2705.
