Schedule of Events | Symposia

Brain activation during suicide specific cognition: Insights from the S-IAT in Post-9/11 Veterans

Poster Session D - Monday, March 31, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Audreyana Jagger-Rickels^1,2,3,43, (acrickel@bu.edu), Jaclyn Kearns^1,2,4, Travis Evans³, David Rothlein^1,2,3,4,5, Craig Bryan⁶, William Millberg^7,8,9, Catherine Fortier^7,8,9, Joe DeGutis^1,3,7,8, Michael Esterman^1,2,3,4,5,7; ¹VA Boston Healthcare System, ²National Center for PTSD, ³Boston Attention and Learning Lab, ⁴Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, ⁵Neuroimaging Research for Veterans, ⁶Ohio State University, ⁷Translational Research Center for TBI and Stress Disorders, ⁸Harvard Medical School, ⁹Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center

The Suicide Implicit Association Test (S-IAT) captures the strength of the implicit identification between oneself and death (i.e., death – me identification), and is one of the only behavioral tasks that is uniquely predictive of future suicide risk. Identifying brain regions involved in death – me identifications may provide important insights into the neural mechanisms underlying suicidal thoughts and behaviors. However, few studies have investigated brain activity during the S-IAT, and none have done so in a clinical or trauma-exposed veteran population. To address this question, this study measured brain activation during the S-IAT with concurrent fMRI in a clinical, post-9/11 trauma-exposed veteran sample. Behaviorally, participants were slower to categorize words during incongruent (death – me) contexts relative to congruent (life – me) contexts (p < 0.001), reflecting greater implicit identification of oneself with life than death. Whole-brain voxelwise fMRI contrasts revealed a brain network that was significantly more active during incongruent trials (death - me) than congruent trials (life – me) that included the bilateral occipital, posterior parietal, insula, and cerebellum (corrected p < 0.05), potentially supporting the resolution of the conflict between representations of oneself and death. These results suggest that death – me identifications involve resolving implicit conflict between self and death representations in the brain and marks an important step towards characterizing neural mechanisms that contribute to suicidality.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Self perception