Vanessa Rocha-Rego
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
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Publication
Featured researches published by Vanessa Rocha-Rego.
Journal of Affective Disorders | 2009
Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Adriana Fiszman; Liana Portugal; Mirtes G. Pereira; Leticia Oliveira; Mauro V. Mendlowicz; Carla Marques-Portella; William Berger; Evandro Silva Freire Coutinho; Jair de Jesus Mari; Ivan Figueira; Eliane Volchan
BACKGROUND Previous studies suggested the importance of peritraumatic reactions as predictors of PSTD symptoms severity. Despite mounting evidence that tonic immobility occurs under intense life threats its role as predictor of PTSD severity remains by and large understudied. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of peritraumatic reactions (tonic immobility, panic and dissociation) as predictors of PTSD symptoms severity. METHODS Participants were 32 victims of urban violence with PTSD diagnosed through the SCID-I. In order to evaluate PTSD symptoms at baseline, we used the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist-Civilian Version. To assess peritraumatic reactions we employed the Physical Reactions Scale, the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire and Tonic Immobility questions. As confounding variables, we considered negative affect (measured by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule-Trait Version), sex and time elapsed since trauma. RESULTS Tonic immobility was the only predictor of PTSD symptoms severity that kept the statistical significance after controlling for potential confounders. LIMITATIONS This study was based on a relatively small sample recruited in a tertiary clinic, a fact that may limit the generalizability of its findings. The retrospective design may have predisposed to recall bias. CONCLUSIONS Our study provides good reason to conduct more research on tonic immobility in PTSD with other samples and with different time frames in an attempt to replicate these stimulating results.
Biological Psychology | 2011
Eliane Volchan; Gabriela Guerra Leal de Souza; Camila M. Franklin; Carlos Eduardo Nórte; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Jose M. Oliveira; Isabel A. David; Mauro V. Mendlowicz; Evandro Silva Freire Coutinho; Adriana Fiszman; William Berger; Carla Marques-Portella; Ivan Figueira
Tonic immobility, characterized by profound motor inhibition, is elicited under inescapable threat in many species. To fully support the existence of tonic immobility in humans, our aim was to elicit this reaction in a laboratory setting and measure it objectively. To mimic exposure to life-threatening events in the lab, trauma-exposed participants with PTSD (n=18) and without PTSD (n=15) listened to the script of their autobiographical trauma. Posturography and electrocardiography were employed. Reports of script-induced immobility were associated with restricted area of body sway and were correlated with accelerated heart rate and diminished heart rate variability, implying that tonic immobility is preserved in humans as an involuntary defensive strategy. Immobility reports seemed more evident in PTSD, suggesting that, in some patients, tonic immobility may be elicited during re-experiencing episodes in daily life. This study provided a measure of tonic immobility, a peritraumatic reaction for which cumulative clinical evidence had linked to the severity of PTSD.
Journal of Psychiatric Research | 2010
Alessandra Azevedo Lima; Adriana Fiszman; Carla Marques-Portella; Mauro V. Mendlowicz; Evandro Silva Freire Coutinho; Deborah Maia; William Berger; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Eliane Volchan; Jair de Jesus Mari; Ivan Figueira
Tonic immobility is the last defense reaction to entrapment by a predator. In humans, peritraumatic tonic immobility was correlated with PTSD severity and poor response to treatment. This study compared the role of peritraumatic dissociation, panic physical symptoms and tonic immobility as predictors of response to standard pharmacotherapy for PTSD. Thirty-six PTSD patients underwent a naturalistic pharmacological treatment. The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist - Civilian Version (PCL-C) and the Clinical Global Impressions Severity of Illness item scores (CGI-S) were employed at baseline and endpoint to examine treatment outcome. Peritraumatic reactions were assessed using the Physical Reactions Subscale, the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire and four motor questions of the Tonic Immobility Scale. After controlling for confounders, tonic immobility was the best predictor of a poor response to treatment, either considering the PCL-C or the CGI-S scores. Tonic immobility seems to have a greater negative impact on PTSD prognosis than peritraumatic panic or dissociation. Additional translational and clinical research may inform about particular mechanisms underlying tonic immobility and open new avenues for prevention and treatment of PTSD.
PLOS ONE | 2012
Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Mirtes G. Pereira; Leticia Oliveira; Mauro V. Mendlowicz; Adriana Fiszman; Carla Marques-Portella; William Berger; Carlton Chu; Mateus Joffily; Jorge Moll; Jair de Jesus Mari; Ivan Figueira; Eliane Volchan
Background Studies addressing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have demonstrated that PTSD patients exhibit structural abnormalities in brain regions that relate to stress regulation and fear responses, such as the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Premotor cortical areas are involved in preparing to respond to a threatening situation and in representing the peripersonal space. Urban violence is an important and pervasive cause of human suffering, especially in large urban centers in the developing world. Violent events, such as armed robbery, are very frequent in certain cities, and these episodes increase the risk of PTSD. Assaultive trauma is characterized by forceful invasion of the peripersonal space; therefore, could this traumatic event be associated with structural alteration of premotor areas in PTSD? Methodology/Principal Findings Structural magnetic resonance imaging scans were acquired from a sample of individuals that had been exposed to urban violence. This sample consisted of 16 PTSD patients and 16 age- and gender-matched controls. Psychometric questionnaires differentiated PTSD patients from trauma-exposed controls with regard to PTSD symptoms, affective, and resilience predispositions. Voxel-based morphometric analysis revealed that, compared with controls, the PTSD patients presented significant reductions in gray matter volume in the ventral premotor cortex and in the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex. Conclusions Volume reduction in the premotor cortex that is observed in victims of urban violence with PTSD may be associated with a disruption in the dynamical modulation of the safe space around the body. The finding that PTSD patients presented a smaller volume of pregenual anterior cingulate cortex is consistent with the results of other PTSD neuroimaging studies that investigated different types of traumatic events.
Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria | 2012
Liana Portugal; Mirtes G. Pereira; Rita de Cássia S. Alves; Gisella Tavares; Isabela Lobo; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Carla Marques-Portella; Mauro V. Mendlowicz; Evandro Silva Freire Coutinho; Adriana Fiszman; Eliane Volchan; Ivan Figueira; Leticia Oliveira
OBJECTIVE Tonic immobility is a defensive reaction occurring under extreme life threats. Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reporting peritraumatic tonic immobility show the most severe symptoms and a poorer response to treatment. This study investigated the predictive value of tonic immobility for posttraumatic stress symptoms in a non-clinical sample. METHODS One hundred and ninety-eight college students exposed to various life threatening events were selected to participate. The Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist - Civilian Version (PCL-C) and tonic immobility questions were used. Linear regression models were fitted to investigate the association between peritraumatic tonic immobility and PCL-C scores. Peritraumatic dissociation, peritraumatic panic reactions, negative affect, gender, type of trauma, and time since trauma were considered as confounding variables. RESULTS We found significant association between peritraumatic tonic immobility and PTSD symptoms in a non-clinical sample exposed to various traumas, even after regression controlled for confounding variables (β = 1.99, p = 0.017). CONCLUSIONS This automatic reaction under extreme life threatening stress, although adaptive for defense, may have pathological consequences as implied by its association with PTSD symptoms.
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews | 2017
Eliane Volchan; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; A.F. Bastos; Jose M. Oliveira; C. Franklin; Sonia Gleiser; William Berger; Gabriela Guerra Leal de Souza; Leticia Oliveira; Isabel A. David; Fátima Erthal; Mirtes G. Pereira; Ivan Figueira
HIGHLIGHTSStabilometry is a successful methodology to study the defensive cascade in humans.Human defensive reactions: attentive immobility, immobility under attack and tonic immobility parallel those proposed for other mammals.Symptom severity in PTSD is associated with peritraumatic tonic immobility, an involuntary reaction under extreme threat.Biological indicators of tonic immobility in humans are characterized by reduced body sway, tachycardia and low heart rate variability. ABSTRACT Violence exacts a burden on public health. Gun violence is a major trigger for motor defensive reactions in humans and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is its main psychiatric sequela. However, studies of the human defensive cascade, especially the motor reactions, are at an early stage. This review focuses on studies that employ stabilometry, a methodology that assesses whole body motor reactions, to address defensive behaviors to violence‐related threats. Special attention is given to three reactions: “attentive immobility”, “immobility under attack” and “tonic immobility”, with emphasis on the latter – a peritraumatic reaction which has been strongly associated with the severity of PTSD. These reactions are characterized by reduced body sway and bradycardia, except tonic immobility that presents robust tachycardia. The advances made by investigations into the immobility reactions of the human defensive cascade contribute to helping to bridge the gap between human and non‐human species. Furthermore, progresses in basic research to objectively monitor motor defensive reactions under threat can help to develop a dimensional, trans‐diagnostic approach to PTSD.
Frontiers in Neuroanatomy | 2011
Renata Figueiredo Anomal; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; João G. Franca
In small-brained mammals, such as opossums, the cortex is organized in fewer sensory and motor areas than in mammals endowed with larger cortical sheets. The presence of multimodal fields, involved in the integration of sensory inputs has not been clearly characterized in those mammals. In the present study, the corticocortical connections of the forepaw representation in the somatosensory caudal (SC) area of the Didelphis aurita opossum was studied with injections of fluorescent anatomical tracers in SC. Electrophysiological mapping of S1 was used to delimit its respective rostral and caudal borders, and to guide SC injections. The areal borders of S1 and the location of area SC were further confirmed by myeloarchitecture. In S1, we found a well-delimited forepaw representation, although it presented a crude internal topographic organization. Cortical projections to S1 originate in somatosensory areas of the parietal cortex, and appeared to be mostly homotopic. Physiological and connectional evidence were provided for a topographic organization in opossum area SC as well. Most notably, corticocortical projections to the forepaw representation of SC originated from somatosensory cortical areas and from cortex representing other sensory modalities, especially the visual peristriate cortex. This suggests that SC might be involved in multimodal processing similar to the posterior parietal cortex of species with larger brains.
Brain Research Bulletin | 2008
Vanessa Rocha-Rego; N.S. Canteras; R.F. Anomal; Eliane Volchan; João G. Franca
The architecture of the amygdaloid complex of a marsupial, the opossum Didelphis aurita, was analyzed using classical stains like Nissl staining and myelin (Gallyas) staining, and enzyme histochemistry for acetylcholinesterase and NADPH-diaphorase. Most of the subdivisions of the amygdaloid complex described in eutherian mammals were identified in the opossum brain. NADPH-diaphorase revealed reactivity in the neuropil of nearly all amygdaloid subdivisions with different intensities, allowing the identification of the medial and lateral subdivisions of the cortical posterior nucleus and the lateral subdivision of the lateral nucleus. The lateral, central, basolateral and basomedial nuclei exhibited acetylcholinesterase positivity, which provided a useful chemoarchitectural criterion for the identification of the anterior basolateral nucleus. Myelin stain allowed the identification of the medial subdivision of the lateral nucleus, and resulted in intense staining of the medial subdivisions of the central nucleus. The medial, posterior, and cortical nuclei, as well as the amygdalopiriform area did not exhibit positivity for myelin staining. On the basis of cyto- and chemoarchitectural criteria, the present study highlights that the opossum amygdaloid complex shares similarities with that of other species, thus supporting the idea that the organization of the amygdala is part of a basic plan conserved through mammalian evolution.
PLOS ONE | 2016
Ciara McCabe; Vanessa Rocha-Rego
Background Dysfunctional neural responses to appetitive and aversive stimuli have been investigated as possible biomarkers for psychiatric disorders. However it is not clear to what degree these are separate processes across the brain or in fact overlapping systems. To help clarify this issue we used Gaussian process classifier (GPC) analysis to examine appetitive and aversive processing in the brain. Method 25 healthy controls underwent functional MRI whilst seeing pictures and receiving tastes of pleasant and unpleasant food. We applied GPCs to discriminate between the appetitive and aversive sights and tastes using functional activity patterns. Results The diagnostic accuracy of the GPC for the accuracy to discriminate appetitive taste from neutral condition was 86.5% (specificity = 81%, sensitivity = 92%, p = 0.001). If a participant experienced neutral taste stimuli the probability of correct classification was 92. The accuracy to discriminate aversive from neutral taste stimuli was 82.5% (specificity = 73%, sensitivity = 92%, p = 0.001) and appetitive from aversive taste stimuli was 73% (specificity = 77%, sensitivity = 69%, p = 0.001). In the sight modality, the accuracy to discriminate appetitive from neutral condition was 88.5% (specificity = 85%, sensitivity = 92%, p = 0.001), to discriminate aversive from neutral sight stimuli was 92% (specificity = 92%, sensitivity = 92%, p = 0.001), and to discriminate aversive from appetitive sight stimuli was 63.5% (specificity = 73%, sensitivity = 54%, p = 0.009). Conclusions Our results demonstrate the predictive value of neurofunctional data in discriminating emotional and neutral networks of activity in the healthy human brain. It would be of interest to use pattern recognition techniques and fMRI to examine network dysfunction in the processing of appetitive, aversive and neutral stimuli in psychiatric disorders. Especially where problems with reward and punishment processing have been implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder.
Frontiers in Psychology | 2017
Heraldo D. Silva; Rafaela R. Campagnoli; Bruna Eugênia F. Mota; Cássia Regina V. Araújo; Roberta Sônia R. Álvares; Izabela Mocaiber; Vanessa Rocha-Rego; Eliane Volchan; Gabriela Guerra Leal Souza
Responding to pro-social cues plays an important adaptive role in humans. Our aims were (i) to create a catalog of bonding and matched-control pictures to compare the emotional reports of valence and arousal with the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) pictures; (ii) to verify sex influence on the valence and arousal of bonding and matched-control pictures; (iii) to investigate if empathy and loneliness traits exert a specific influence on emotional reports for the bonding pictures. To provide a finer tool for social interaction studies, the present work defined two new sets of pictures consisting of “interacting dyads” (Bonding: N = 70) and matched controls “non-interacting dyads” (Controls: N = 70). The dyads could be either a child and an adult, or two children. Participants (N = 283, 182 women) were divided in 10 groups for the experimental sessions. The task was to rate the hedonic valence and emotional arousal of bonding and controls; and of pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures from the IAPS. Effects of social-related traits, empathy and loneliness, on affective ratings were tested. Participants rated bonding pictures as more pleasant and arousing than control ones. Ratings did not differentiate bonding from IAPS pleasant pictures. Control pictures showed lower ratings than pleasant but higher ratings than neutral IAPS pictures. Women rated bonding and control pictures as more positive than men. There was no sex difference for arousal ratings. High empathic participants rated bonding and control pictures higher than low empathic participants. Also, they rated pleasant IAPS pictures more positive and arousing; and unpleasant pictures more negative and arousing than the less empathic ones. Loneliness trait, on the other hand, affected very specifically the ratings of bonding pictures; lonelier participants rated them less pleasant and less arousing than less lonely. Loneliness trait did not modulate ratings of other categories. In conclusion, high empathy seems related to emotional strength in general, while high loneliness seems to weaken the engagement in social interaction cues.