CPT-fMRI Study for PTSD

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is prevalent mental illness (~9% life-time) that results from exposure to trauma. As it is associated with vastly heterogeneous origins, accurate diagnosis and optimal treatment strategies are sometimes very difficult to achieve. No known biomarker exists, which makes it difficult to assess treatment response and functional outcomes. The recent brain imaging studies have suggested that PTSD patients show abnormal brain connectivity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The investigators propose that cognitive processing therapy may ameliorate this functional connectivity abnormality which may be related with their symptomatic improvement.