Altered cortical activation and functional network in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during an auditory cognitive processing

The altered cognitive function related to intrusive memory is a distinguished symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the present study, we investigated the altered cortical activation and functional network in PTSD patients using electroencephalogram (EEG) measured during an auditory cognitive task. A time-series of neuronal activities was reconstructed using EEG from 25 PTSD patients and 25 healthy controls (HC). PTSD patients showed an unclear P300 event-related potential (ERP) waveform and significantly different power spectrum compared to HC. In addition, the altered network indices (low strength and clustering coefficient, but enhanced path length) appeared in PTSD patients, and the reduced nodal clustering coefficients were significantly related to symptom scores. Finally, we achieved the best classification of 80.00 % when differentiating PTSD patients and HC based on network features.