Biological psychiatry
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Biological psychiatry · May 2007
Altered central micro-opioid receptor binding after psychological trauma.
Functional neuroimaging studies have detected abnormal limbic and paralimbic activation to emotional probes in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but few studies have examined neurochemical mechanisms that underlie functional alterations in regional cerebral blood flow. The mu-opioid neurotransmitter system, implicated in responses to stress and suppression of pain, is distributed in and is thought to regulate the function of brain regions that are implicated in affective processing. ⋯ These findings differentiate the general response of the micro-opioid system to trauma from more specific changes associated with PTSD.