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Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD

View ORCID ProfileOfer Perl, Or Duek, View ORCID ProfileKaustubh R. Kulkarni, Ben Kelmendi, Shelley Amen, Charles Gordon, John H. Krystal, Ifat Levy, Ilan Harpaz-Rotem, Daniela Schiller
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.30.502151
Ofer Perl
1Center for Computational Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
2Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
3Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
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  • ORCID record for Ofer Perl
Or Duek
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
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Kaustubh R. Kulkarni
1Center for Computational Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
2Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
3Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
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Ben Kelmendi
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
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Shelley Amen
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
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Charles Gordon
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
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John H. Krystal
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
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Ifat Levy
6Departments of Comparative Medicine and Neuroscience, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
7Department of Psychology and the Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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Ilan Harpaz-Rotem
4Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New-Haven, CT, USA
5The National Center for PTSD, VA CT Healthcare System, West Haven CT, USA
7Department of Psychology and the Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
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  • For correspondence: daniela.schiller@mssm.edu ilan.harpaz-rotem@yale.edu
Daniela Schiller
1Center for Computational Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
3Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
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  • For correspondence: daniela.schiller@mssm.edu ilan.harpaz-rotem@yale.edu
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Abstract

For people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), recalling traumatic memories often displays as intrusions that differ profoundly from processing of ‘regular’ negative memories. These mnemonic features fueled theories speculating a qualitative divergence in cognitive state linked with traumatic memories. Yet to date, little empirical evidence supports this view. Here, we examined neural activity of PTSD patients who were listening to narratives depicting their own memories. An inter-subject representational similarity analysis of cross-subject semantic content and neural patterns revealed a differentiation in hippocampal representation by narrative type: Semantically similar sad autobiographical memories elicited similar neural representations across participants. By contrast, within the same individuals, semantically thematically similar trauma memories were not represented similarly. Furthermore, we were able to decode memory type from hippocampal multivoxel patterns. Finally, individual symptom severity modulated semantic representation of the traumatic narratives in the posterior cingulate cortex. Taken together, these findings suggest that traumatic memories are a qualitatively divergent cognitive entity.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • https://osf.io/dc7jb/

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted August 02, 2022.
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Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD
Ofer Perl, Or Duek, Kaustubh R. Kulkarni, Ben Kelmendi, Shelley Amen, Charles Gordon, John H. Krystal, Ifat Levy, Ilan Harpaz-Rotem, Daniela Schiller
bioRxiv 2022.07.30.502151; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.30.502151
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Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD
Ofer Perl, Or Duek, Kaustubh R. Kulkarni, Ben Kelmendi, Shelley Amen, Charles Gordon, John H. Krystal, Ifat Levy, Ilan Harpaz-Rotem, Daniela Schiller
bioRxiv 2022.07.30.502151; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.30.502151

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