Decreased uncinate fasciculus tract integrity in male and female patients with PTSD: a diffusion tensor imaging study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disabling psychiatric disorder that has been associated with lower white matter integrity of tracts connecting the prefrontal cortex with limbic regions. However, previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) findings have been inconsistent, showing high variability in the exact location and direction of effects. Methods: We performed probabilistic tractography of the bilateral uncinate fasciculus, cingulum and superior longitudinal fasciculus (both temporal and parietal projections) in male and female police officers with and without PTSD. Results: We included 38 (21 men) police officers with and 39 (20 men) without PTSD in our analyses. Compared with trauma-exposed controls, patients with PTSD showed significantly higher mean diffusivity of the right uncinate fasciculus, the major white matter tract connecting the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex ( p = 0.012). No other significant between-group or group × sex differences were observed. Mean diffusivity of the right uncinate fasciculus was positively associated with anxiety symptoms ( r = 0.410, p = 0.013) in patients with PTSD as well as with amygdala activity ( r = 0.247, p = 0.038) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activity ( r = 0.283, p = 0.016) in all participants in response to happy and neutral faces. Limitations: Our specific sample of trauma-exposed police officers limits the generalizability of our findings to other PTSD patient groups (e.g., civilian trauma). Conclusion: Patients with PTSD showed diminished structural connectivity between the amygdala and vmPFC, which was correlated with higher anxiety symptoms and increased functional activity of these brain regions. Our findings provide additional evidence for the prevailing neurocircuitry model of PTSD, postulating that ineffective communication between the amygdala and vmPFC underlies decreased top–down control over fear responses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".