Salivary Cortisol and Regional Brain Volumes Among Veterans With and Without Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

Estimates of cortical but not hippocampal or amygdala volume were moderately associated with evening basal salivary cortisol and cortisol reactivity to a social stressor. Existing models relating GC receptor density, circulating cortisol levels, and regional brain volumes received little support.

Smaller hippocampal volume following sexual assault in women is associated with post‐traumatic stress disorder

“…Consistently, a recent prospective study indicates that in the context of no changes in hippocampal volume between 2 weeks and 3 months following a motor vehicle accident, small hippocampal volumes were associated with increased risk for PTSD and re‐experiencing symptoms in this population . Finally, there is to date no clear consensus on the relationship between cortisol dysregulation and hippocampal/amygdala volumes in the development of PTSD: while chronicity of stress exposure, rather than stress exposure itself, may be neurotoxic for stress‐sensitive brain regions , a recent study in veterans reported no associations between salivary cortisol indices and hippocampal/amygdala volumes .…”

Neurobiological mechanisms underlying sex-related differences in stress-related disorders: Effects of neuroactive steroids on the hippocampus

“…Studies extracting hippocampal volumes directly, rather than testing for differences at the whole-brain level often also report larger hippocampal volumes in women after puberty ( Filipek et al, 1994 ; Garcia-Falgueras et al, 2006 ; Satterthwaite et al, 2014 ), although sometimes only in certain hippocampal subfields ( Persson et al, 2014 ; Maller et al, 2006 ; Riggins et al, 2018 ; Meyer et al, 2017 ). However, a recent meta-analysis arrives at the conclusion that irrespective of age, hippocampal volumes do not differ between males and females after correcting for total brain size ( Gur et al, 2002 ; Babson et al, 2017 ; Perlaki et al, 2014 ; McHugh et al, 2007 ; Jancke et al, 2015 ; Bhatia et al, 1993 ). In contrast, a large-scale, world-wide, study including almost 16.000 subjects reported slightly larger volumes in males compared to females ( Guadalupe et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Chronically elevated cortisol levels have been linked to reduced hippocampal volumes in a variety of studies including different patient groups and healthy subjects of different sex and ages ( Travis et al, 2016 ; Babson et al, 2017 ; Wolf et al, 2002 ; Watanabe et al, 2017 ; Vachon-Presseau et al, 2013 ; Sudheimer et al, 2014 ; Starkman et al, 2003 ; Jin et al, 2016 ; Davis et al, 2017 ; Chen et al, 2016 ; Burkhardt et al, 2015 ; Brown et al, 2004 ) and have been linked to declarative memory deficits ( Coluccia et al, 2008 ; Starkman et al, 2003 ). Likewise, increased diurnal cortisol levels are related to reduced hippocampal activation ( Cunningham-Bussel et al, 2009 ).…”

Stress vulnerability and resilience in children facing COVID-19-related discrimination: A quasi-experimental study using polygenic, brain, and sociodemographic data

“…A potential reason for this could be the omission of post-discrimination covariates from our analysis. Since structural changes in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex 53–55 and hippocampus 56, 57 following traumatic events are linked to the modulation of stress responses, the absence of post-discrimination neural measurements in the ABCD dataset might prevent the detection of individual sustained response variations. To address this, future research should incorporate the forthcoming neuroanatomical dataset that spans from the instances of discrimination to the resulting stress levels.…”