Research Article Volumetric Analysis of Amygdala, Hippocampus, and Prefrontal Cortex in Therapy-Naive PTSD Participants

Copyright © 2014 Ana Starcevic et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objective. In our study we have hypothesized that volume changes of amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex are more pronounced in male posttraumatic stress disorder participants.Material and Methods. We have conducted a study of 79 male par-ticipants who underwentMRI brain scanning. PTSDdiagnosis was confirmed in 49 participants. AfterMRIwas taken all scanswere software based volume computed and statistically processed. Results. We found that left amygdala is the most significant parameter for distinction between PTSD participants and participants without PTSD.There were no significant differences in volumes of hip-pocampi and prefrontal cortices. Roc curvemethod outlined left amygdalaAUC = 0.898 (95%CI = 0.830–0.967) and right amygdala AUC = 0.882 (95 % CI = 0.810–0.954) in the group of PTSD participants which makes both variables highly statistically significant. Conclusion.Thepresent investigation revealed significant volumedecrease of left amygdala in PTSDpatients. Concerning important functions of the amygdala and her neuroanatomical connections with other brain structures, we need to increase number of partic