Diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) based on correlations of prewhitened fMRI data: outcomes and areas involved

Exp Brain Res. 2015 Sep;233(9):2695-705. doi: 10.1007/s00221-015-4339-0. Epub 2015 Jun 13.

Abstract

Successful diagnosis of PTSD has been achieved using neural correlations from prewhitened magnetoencephalographic (MEG) time series (Georgopoulos et al. in J Neural Eng 7:16011, 2010. doi:10.1088/1741-2560/7/1/016011; James et al. 2015). Here, we show that highly successful classification of PTSD and control subjects can be obtained using neural correlations from prewhitened resting-state fMRI data. All but one PTSD (14/15; sensitivity = 93.3 %) and all but one control (20/21; specificity = 95.2 %) subjects were correctly classified using 15 out of 2701 possible correlations between 74 brain areas. In contrast, correlations of the same but non-prewhitened data yielded chance-level classifications. We conclude that, if properly processed, fMRI has the prospect of aiding significantly in PTSD diagnosis. Twenty-five brain areas were most prominently involved in correct subject classification, including areas from all cortical lobes and the left pallidum.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Brain / blood supply*
  • Brain / pathology
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging*
  • Magnetoencephalography
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Oxygen / blood
  • Probability
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Statistics as Topic
  • Statistics, Nonparametric
  • Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / diagnosis*
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • Oxygen