Norbury, A., Rutter, S. B., Collins, A. B., Costi, S., Jha, M. K., Horn, S. R., Kautz, M., Corniquel, M., Collins, K. A., Glasgow, A. M., Brallier, J., Shin, L. M., Charney, D. S., Murrough, J. W., & Feder, A. (2021). Neuroimaging correlates and predictors of response to repeated-dose intravenous ketamine in PTSD:  Preliminary evidence. Neuropsychopharmacology.

Highlights:

• Here, we provide preliminary evidence of changes in functional imaging measures of brain activity associated with improvement in overall PTSD symptom severity in individuals undergoing treatment with repeated-dose intravenous ketamine or midazolam.
• In a sample of individuals with severe, chronic PTSD, the most reliably identified predictor of symptom improvement across models was increased functional connectivity between the amygdala and vmPFC during the viewing of emotional face stimuli.
• Increased emotion-related vmPFC-amygdala coherence was the strongest correlate of symptom change across all subjects—with some evidence of a stronger effect in individuals who received ketamine, and specificity to the reduction in cardinal PTSD symptoms (i.e., over and above concomitant decreases in depressive symptoms)