Stress and Emotional Memory (SEME)

March 30, 2026 updated by: University Hospital, Caen

Stress and Emotional Memory : Functional Neuroanatomy of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder in Adolescents

A broad group of disorders is associated with severe stress existence in children or adolescents. The most characteristic result, and one of the most serious being the state of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), whose main source consists of physical or sexual violence, and to a lesser extent, accidents public road or natural disaster, whose child was the subject or witness. PTSD is associated with a deleterious effect on cognition and including the mnemonic operation. The painful reminder of the traumatic event is one of the most disabling symptoms. However, there are many other memory disorders that experimental studies gradually update. They maintain a close link with emotional regulation that disturbed you know if PTSD. However the majority of studies on emotion and cognition and their relationship with brain activity took adult subject. Work in adolescents are few on the morphological study, on rare neurobehavioral and reduced to two studies of functional neuroimaging. Contrary to what is observed in adults, morphological studies report consistently, no reduction in hippocampal volume. There is no study in the idle state. Two studies in functional MRI, the first highlighted in PTSD patients inhibition of the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to stimuli such as to evoke the trauma, a second reported increased activity in the prefrontal cortex Median (mPFC) in a inhibition. The objective task of our study is to evaluate the impact of psychological trauma on brain structures involved in the emotional component of the memory (amygdala, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex in particular). For this, the investigators will take in 33 adolescents, including patients with posttraumatic symptomatology and matched controls free of trauma age, several neuroimaging exams, anatomical and functional. The functional review will include some rest and another in activation during episodic memory task designed to assess the influence of self-perception on memory impairment observed in patients. The investigators will check, for each group of patients and controls, the involvement of cortical structures in relation to the regulation of emotional memory (CCA, amygdala and hippocampus). The anatomy of the hippocampus benefit specific imaging methods developed in the unit INSERM U923. Endocrine correlates of stress tests will be studied by a fully-traumatic by salivary cortisol sampling.

This research will clarify the mechanisms involved in emotional and memory impairments secondary to psychological trauma, their relationship with self (judgment and self-esteem) and studying their morphological substrates. A longer-term goal is to offer help in the diagnosis and monitoring of young patients with posttraumatic symptomatology.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

19

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • France
      • Caen, France, 14000
        • Service de Pédopsychiatrie

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

13 years to 18 years (Child, Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Subjects aged 13-18 years
  • Informed consent signed by the legal representative and adolescents (e) itself.
  • Speaking French as their mother tongue
  • patients:subjects with a history of psychological trauma (eg, accidents of public roads (without head trauma), physical or sexual violence) recruited in the care services of hospitals, the diagnosis of chronic PTSD is made using a standardized interview (SCID).
  • Healthy controls : subjects who do not have a history of psychological trauma, nor PTSD

Exclusion Criteria:

  • ASD, schizophrenia, ADHD
  • Head injury with loss of consciousness
  • Regular or recent use of alcohol or drugs
  • chronic neurological or endocrine disorder
  • use of medication that could interfere with the mnemonic or metabolic measurements (psychotropic, hypnotics, anxiolytics, neuroleptics, benzodiazepines, drugs, antiepileptics anti-inflammatory, anti-histamines, central analgesics and muscle relaxants)
  • Contraindications to MRI (claustrophobia, metallic object intracorporal)
  • Manual Predominance left
  • Severe mental retardation evaluated using two subtests from the WISC-IV scales and WAIS III
  • Reading Disorders valued using the read speed test

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Diagnostic
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Other: PTSD group
Other: MRI
Other: Healthy Volunteers
Healthy Volunteers, age-matched controls.
Other: MRI

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
Amplitude of the BOLD fMRI signal measured at rest and during cognitive tasks (activation)
Time Frame: baseline
baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University Hospital, Caen

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

May 1, 2012

Primary Completion (Actual)

April 1, 2015

Study Completion (Actual)

April 1, 2015

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

July 27, 2015

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

July 28, 2015

First Posted (Estimated)

July 29, 2015

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

April 2, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

March 30, 2026

Last Verified

July 1, 2015

More Information

Terms related to this study

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 10-035

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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