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Cerebral correlates of heart rate variations during a spontaneous panic attack in the fMRI scanner
Kai Spiegelhalder1, Magdolna Hornyak, Simon David Kyle
1Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Freiburg Medical Center, Hauptstrasse 5, 79104 Freiburg, Germany. Kai.Spiegelhalder@uniklinik-freiburg.de
Abstract:
We report the first published case study of a suddenly occurring panic attack in a patient with no prior history of panic disorder during combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI, 1.5 Tesla) and electrocardiogram (ECG) recording. The single case was a 46-year-old woman who developed a panic attack near the planned end of the fMRI acquisition session, which therefore had to be aborted. Correlational analysis of heart rate fluctuations and fMRI data revealed a significant negative association in the left middle temporal gyrus. Additionally, regions-of-interest (ROI) analyses indicated significant positive associations in the left amygdala, and trends towards significance in the right amygdala and left insula.
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