International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

Abstract

The default brain activities in the treatment of panic disorder (PD) are not studied well. So this longitudinal study was designed to survey the accompanying changes of fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) when panic disorder (PD) patients achieved remission within 6 weeks. Twenty-one patients were enrolled to finish the 6-week treatment of antidepressant with remission. They all received resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RFMRI) scans at baseline and 6th week. In addition, twenty-one healthy controls were scanned twice within 6 weeks to exclude the inter-scan bias. The RFMRI images were analyzed by REST toolbox (resting-state functional MRI data analysis toolbox) to obtain the fALFF data of patients and controls at baseline and 6th week. The treatment-related effects and group-related effects were derived from the ANCOVA test of patients (at baseline and remitted status) and group differences between patients and controls. The treatment-related effects showed that increased fALFF in right middle cingulate cortex and left postcentral gyrus after remission in PD patients. The improvements of panic severity also correlated positively with the increases in fALFF of the right middle cingulate cortex. The residual fALFF group-related differences between remitted PD patients and controls were found in the occipital lobe and thalamus. The remission of PD would accompany with the increases in fALFF of cingulatepostcentral gyrus. The residual occipito-thalamic differences would still exist even after remission.

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