Association between frontolimbic function and cortisol levels in response to traumatic stimuli in normal subjects

The human stress response consists of a complex, coordinated sequence of neural and physiological changes partly subserved by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. Key limbic and frontal structures, involved in fear conditioning and its modulation, have been demonstrated to play a role in modulating the activity of the HPA axis, including amygdaloid and hippocampal formations, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) regions, which exhibit excitatory (amygdala) and inhibitory (hippocampus; vmPFC) effects on the HPA axis. While HPA function and associated endocrine changes have been widely inves…