Project description
Traumatic stress impact on brain structure
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) causes emotional and functional impairment. Despite extensive research on individual responses to trauma, applying this knowledge in clinical settings remains limited. The ERC-funded TraumaNeuroInsight project aims to understand the impact of traumatic stress on brain structure and function, ultimately reshaping the connection between neuroscience and clinical research. It will establish an open-access database with information from 1 000 participants with PTSD, 1 000 trauma-exposed healthy individuals and 1 000 non-exposed individuals. The project will also conduct a longitudinal study to track long-term stress-related symptoms and brain connectivity dynamics. Additionally, it will test the impact of MRI-guided neurostimulation on cortico-hippocampal networks to assess its effect on brain connectivity patterns and the severity of memory symptoms.
Objective
Exposure to a traumatic event can induce psycho-physiological reactions and symptoms that in most people recede over time. A minority of trauma-exposed individuals develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), characterized by severe functional and emotional impairment. The global burden of PTSD is estimated in the hundreds of billions of Euros and millions of years lived with disability. Individual differences in neurobiological vulnerability to traumatic stress have been studied extensively, yet the impact of neuroscience on clinical application is minimal. The proposed work aims to address this gap using three work packages (WPs). WP1 will establish a detailed open-access database to study the impact of traumatic stress on brain structure/function connectome: 1000 participants with PTSD, 1000 trauma-exposed healthy, 1000 non-exposed. WP2 is a longitudinal study of the effects of trauma exposure. It will delineate long-term trajectories of stress-related symptoms and corresponding connectome dynamics. Building on already collected data from 579 veterans who were followed over four years, starting with a pre-exposure baseline, we will add two new data points, at 7- and 9-year post-exposure, to reveal long-term adaptation patterns. WP3 is a 3-armed randomized controlled trial to test the impact of MRI-guided neurostimulation of cortico-hippocampal networks on brain connectivity patterns and severity of memory symptoms. We target cortico-hippocampal connections with broad impact on cortical circuitry, consistent with our focus on whole-brain connectome correlates. Moving beyond separate analyses of brain structure and function in relation to a heterogeneous definition of PTSD, we will use combined structure/function modeling in relation to specific symptoms. Together the proposed work is expected to redetermine the transaction between neuroscience and clinical research in relation to trauma psychopathology.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesneurobiology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinepsychiatryposttraumatic stress disorder
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
69978 Tel Aviv
Israel