ABSTRACT
Neuroimaging provides a powerful way to investigate the structural and functional abnormalities associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and PTSD vulnerability. It can be used to identify mechanisms that mediate emotional processing in healthy individuals as well as the dysregulation of these processes in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Reviewed are neuroimaging findings in PTSD, with a focus on studies utilizing symptom provocation, cognitive activation, and functional connectivity. These studies identify neurocircuitry associated with PTSD, highlighting the role of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), insula, amygdala, sublenticular extended amygdala (SLEA), and hippocampus, in mediating symptom formation in PTSD. In addition, psychological processes presently emerging as new foci in neuroimaging research relevant to PTSD, such as fear conditioning, habituation, extinction recall; cognitiveemotional interactions are also discussed. Findings linking neurocircuitry subserving these processes to the abnormalities associated with PTSD are highlighted, suggesting that mPFC is implicated in a number of these processes. Finally, a section on receptor imaging will discuss the differences in functional neurochemistry associated with PTSD.
