Cortical Thickness in Dutch Police Officers: An Examination of Factors Associated with Resilience

Previous neuroimaging studies on resilience have generally compared resilience and psychopathology after stress exposure, which does not allow for conclusions regarding correlates specific to resilience. The aim of the present study was to investigate resilience-specific correlates in cortical thickness and/or cortical surface area and their correlations with psychometric measurements, using a three-group design that included a non-trauma-exposed control group in order to disentangle effects related to resilience from those related to psychopathology. Structural magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from 82 Dutch police officers. Participants were categorized into resilient (n = 31; trauma exposure, no psychopathology), vulnerable (n = 32; trauma exposure, psychopathology), and control groups (n = 19; no trauma exposure, no psychopathology). Specific regions of interest (ROIs) were identified based on previous studies that found the rostral and caudal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to be implicated in trauma-related psychopathology. Cortical thickness and surface area of the ROIs-the rostral and caudal ACC-and of the whole brain were examined. No significant differences in cortical thickness or surface area were found between the resilient group and other groups in the ROI and whole-brain analyses. Thus, the results of the present study provide no evidence of an association between resilience to traumatic stress and measures of thickness and surface area in cortical regions of the brain in a sample of Dutch police officers.