engleski

Pilot fMRI study of deployment-ready and novice soldiers mental involvement to presentation of real-life combat videos

Stressful situations have large impact on our cognition, emotions and behavior. There is a great individual variability in the stress-coping skills which are of vital importance for professionals who work in highly stressful environment. Investigation of neural circuits involved in response to stress may help explain why some individuals are vulnerable and others are stress resilient. Our pilot fMRI study has been done on a few trained soldiers waiting for deployment in Afghanistan and as many novice soldiers. We used block-design fMRI stimulation paradigm [1] composed of static picture of black "+" sign alternating with three videos of real-life combat clips, with each static picture or video clip lasting 30 s (scanned on 3T Siemens Magnetom TrioTim, 64 x 64 matrix, EPI sequence, TR = 3000 ms ; TE = 31 ms ; resolution 3.3 x 3.3 x 3 mm). Functional imaging data were processed using SPM 8 software (Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, London). Deployment-ready soldiers showed greater bilateral activation in temporo-parietal junction, which is important for negative affectivity and social inhibition, and in the superior parietal lobe, known for integrating different sensory information. These results suggest that relevance and involvement to stressful combat stimuli is much more evident in deployment-ready soldiers in comparison with novice soldiers.

stress; fMRI; soldiers

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