Archival ReportNeural Correlates of Altered Pain Response in Women with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from Intimate Partner Violence
Section snippets
Subjects
Thirty-one women experiencing current post-traumatic stress related to IPV were enrolled. In this study, IPV was defined as physical and/or sexual abuse by a male romantic partner within the past 5 years. Each subject fulfilled diagnostic criteria for full (21F) or partial (2F) PTSD according to a structured clinical interview for DSM-IV (35) and scored >50 on the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) (36). The PTSD-IPV women were excluded if they were currently in an abusive relationship or
Psychological Measures
Women with IPV-related PTSD had significantly higher scores on the Beck Depression Inventory (t = 10.7, p < .01), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (both state and trait) (t values > 3.0, p values < .01), Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (t values > 2.2, p values < .05), and Dissociative Experiences Scale—Traumatic (t = 3.0, p < .01), as indicated in Table 1. Differences in psychological measures are consistent with prior literature (32, 46).
Temperature Ratings
As hypothesized, repeated measures analysis of variance
Discussion
To our knowledge this is the first report describing the neural correlates of experimental pain perception in women with IPV-related PTSD. The results of the current experiment indicate that women with IPV-related PTSD displayed altered subjective experience and brain activation to experimental heat stimuli, which is consistent with findings from a study with men and combat-related PTSD (14). Specifically, we found that in women with IPV-related PTSD, repeated exposure to aversive sensory
References (70)
Health consequences of intimate partner violence
Lancet
(2002)- et al.
Gender differences in susceptibility to posttraumatic stress disorder
Behav Res Ther
(2000) Intimate partner violence
Obstet Gynecol Clin North Am
(2007)- et al.
Pain and PTSD symptoms in female veterans
Eur J Pain
(2004) - et al.
Chronic pain in women survivors of intimate partner violence
J Pain
(2008) - et al.
Pain medication use among patients with posttraumatic stress disorder
Psychosomatics
(2006) - et al.
Differentiation of pain ratings in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder
Pain
(2009) - et al.
Stress-induced analgesia
Prog Neurobiol
(2009) - et al.
Stress-induced analgesia: Prediction of posttraumatic stress symptoms in battered versus nonbattered women
Biol Psychiatry
(2002) - et al.
Fear and anxiety: Divergent effects on human pain thresholds
Pain
(2000)
Anxiety sensitivity and pain: Generalisability across noxious stimuli
Pain
Habituation to painful stimulation involves the antinociceptive system
Pain
Functional activation and neural networks in women with posttraumatic stress disorder related to intimate partner violence
Biol Psychiatry
Brain activation during script-driven imagery induced dissociative responses in PTSD: A functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation
Biol Psychiatry
Development and validation of a brief screening version of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire
Child Abus Negl
AFNI: Software for analysis and visualization of functional magnetic resonance neuroimages
Comput Biomed Res
Posttraumatic stress disorder in the primary care medical setting
Gen Hosp Psychiatry
Anticipation of aversive visual stimuli is associated with increased insula activation in anxiety-prone subjects
Biol Psychiatry
The cognitive control of emotion
Trends Cogn Sci
Experiential avoidance as a generalized psychological vulnerability: Comparisons with coping and emotion regulation strategies
Behav Res Ther
Effects of naloxone and repeated stimulus presentation on cortical somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) amplitude in the rat
Exp Neurol
Altered central micro-opioid receptor binding after psychological trauma
Biol Psychiatry
The amygdala: Different pains, different mechanisms
Pain
The impact of physical, psychological, and sexual intimate male partner violence on women's mental health: Depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder, state anxiety, and suicide
J Womens Health
Mental health correlates of intimate partner violence in marital relationships in a nationally representative sample of males and females
J Interpers Violence
Intimate partner violence, PTSD, and adverse health outcomes
J Interpers Violence
Medical and psychosocial diagnoses in women with a history of intimate partner violence
Arch Intern Med
Pain in the aftermath of trauma is a risk factor for post-traumatic stress disorder
Psychol Med
Posttraumatic stress disorder in female veterans: Association with self-reported health problems and functional impairment
Arch Intern Med
Abuse-related injury and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder as mechanisms of chronic pain in survivors of intimate partner violence
Pain Med
Altered pain processing in veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder
Arch Gen Psychiatry
Pain sensitivity is reduced in borderline personality disorder, but not in posttraumatic stress disorder and bulimia nervosa
World J Biol Psychiatry
Endogenous opioids, stress induced analgesia, and posttraumatic stress disorder
Psychopharmacol Bull
Naloxone-reversible analgesic response to combat-related stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorderA pilot study
Arch Gen Psychiatry
De novo conditioning in trauma-exposed individuals with and without posttraumatic stress disorder
J Abnorm Psychol
Cited by (86)
The cerebellum and psychological trauma: A systematic review of neuroimaging studies
2022, Neurobiology of StressAltered physical pain processing in different psychiatric conditions
2022, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsThe three faces of intimate partner violence against women seen from the neuroimaging studies: A literature review
2022, Aggression and Violent BehaviorNon-communicable diseases among women survivors of intimate partner violence: Critical review from a chronic stress framework
2021, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral ReviewsSexual trauma history is associated with reduced orbitofrontal network strength in substance-dependent women
2019, NeuroImage: ClinicalCitation Excerpt :In line with these behavioral observations, PTSD and sexual trauma have previously been associated with altered brain metabolism in regions associated with interoceptive and somatosensory processing. Specifically, women with PTSD due to intimate partner violence have blunted subjective pain and pain-linked anterior insula responses that are inversely correlated with avoidant symptoms (Strigo et al., 2010), and (primarily) female patients with dissociative PTSD show reduced functional connectivity of vestibular brainstem nuclei with a parieto-posterior insula network and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLFPC) (Harricharan et al., 2017). Exposure to traumatic events are as high as 93% in some SUD samples (Reynolds et al., 2011).