Functional neuro-anatomy of social cognition in posttraumatic stress disorder: A systematic review

Abstract

Objective: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common mental disorder following one or more traumatic events in which patients exhibit behavioural and emotional disturbances. Recent studies report alterations in social cognition with cerebral functioning modifications. While it is now established that brain function can be modified and severely altered following successive childhood traumas, less studies have focused on brain alterations in adults with normal social cognition development.

Methods: We conducted a selective literature review by querying PubMed and Embase databases for titles of articles research on PTSD adults published from January 2000 to December 2021 focusing on adulthood traumatic events.

Results: Majority of studies reported frontolimbic rupture, with limbic structures like amygdala missing top-down control of frontal regulation. These cerebral dysfunctions could be observed even without overt behavioural defects on social cognition tests.

Conclusion: These results can be analysed in light of intrinsic cerebral networks and we propose an attentional model of social threat information processing opening up perspective of social attentional rehabilitation in adjunction to usual care.

Keywords: Cognition; Empathy; Neuroimaging; PTSD; Posttraumatic stress disorder; Theory of mind; Trauma.