Scholars@Duke
Kate Webb

Kate Webb

Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Behavioral Medicine & Neurosciences
kate.webb@duke.edu
2400 Pratt St., Room 6009, DUMC 102505, Durham, NC 27705
Duke University Medical Center, DUMC 102505, Durham, NC 27710

Selected Publications

Trauma-informed systems change training has transcultural, transcontinental transformative healing power: An analysis of leaders in the United States and Angola, Africa.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · December 2024 The Institute for Trauma-Informed Systems Change (ITISC) facilitated a 2-day, 12-hr trauma-informed workshop, delivered virtually, using the Training for Change curriculum. The workshop took place in Portuguese in September 2021 with a group of Angolan lea ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood Resources Associated With Psychological Trajectories and Neural Reactivity to Reward After Trauma.

Journal Article JAMA Psychiatry · November 1, 2024 IMPORTANCE: Research on resilience after trauma has often focused on individual-level factors (eg, ability to cope with adversity) and overlooked influential neighborhood-level factors that may help mitigate the development of posttraumatic stress disorder ... Full text Link to item Cite

Investigating the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis as a predictor of posttraumatic stress disorder in Black Americans and the moderating effects of racial discrimination.

Journal Article Transl Psychiatry · August 21, 2024 Altered functioning of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) may play a critical role in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Chronic stressors such as racial discrimination and lifetime trauma are associated with an increased ris ... Full text Link to item Cite

Childhood Maltreatment and Amygdala-Mediated Anxiety and Posttraumatic Stress Following Adult Trauma

Journal Article Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science · July 1, 2024 Background: Childhood abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) is associated with aberrant connectivity of the amygdala, a key threat-processing region. Heightened amygdala activity also predicts adult anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) sympto ... Full text Cite

The neurophysiological consequences of racism-related stressors in Black Americans.

Journal Article Neurosci Biobehav Rev · June 2024 Racism-related stressors, from experiences of both implicit and explicit racial discrimination to systemic socioeconomic disadvantage, have a cumulative impact on Black Americans' health. The present narrative review synthesizes peripheral (neuroendocrine ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Dichotomy of Threat and Deprivation as Subtypes of Childhood Maltreatment: Differential Functional Connectivity Patterns of Threat and Reward Circuits in an Adult Trauma Sample.

Journal Article Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging · February 2024 BACKGROUND: Childhood maltreatment is associated with reduced activation of the nucleus accumbens, a central region in the reward network, and overactivity in the amygdala, a key region in threat processing. However, the long-lasting impact of these associ ... Full text Link to item Cite

Training for Lasting Change: Trauma-Informed Training Results in Improved and Sustained Individual and Organizational Knowledge, Attitudes, and Policies.

Journal Article J Clin Psychiatry · October 30, 2023 Objective: Trauma-informed care (TIC) trainings seek to improve individual and organizational recognition and care to individuals who have experienced trauma. However, whether TIC trainings result in long-term changes to an organization's policies and prac ... Full text Link to item Cite

Psychological and physiological correlates of stimulus discrimination in adults.

Journal Article Psychophysiology · October 2023 The discrimination of cues in the environment that signal danger ("fear cue") is important for survival but depends critically on the discernment of such cues from ones that pose no threat ("safety cues"). In rodents, we previously demonstrated the underly ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood Disadvantage and Neural Correlates of Threat and Reward Processing in Survivors of Recent Trauma.

Journal Article JAMA Netw Open · September 5, 2023 IMPORTANCE: Differences in neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics are important considerations in understanding differences in risk vs resilience in mental health. Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with alterations in the function and structure o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood-Level Factors in the Development and Treatment of Trauma and Stress-Related Disorders

Journal Article Current Treatment Options in Psychiatry · September 1, 2023 Purpose of Review: Community- and neighborhood-level factors are important, but understudied, influences on trauma-related disorders and their treatment. In this review, we describe how neighborhood factors are evaluated including through aggregate measure ... Full text Cite

Attributional negativity bias and acute stress disorder symptoms mediate the association between trauma history and future posttraumatic stress disorder.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · August 2023 Individuals who have experienced more trauma throughout their life have a heightened risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following injury. Although trauma history cannot be retroactively modified, identifying the mechanism(s) by which p ... Full text Link to item Cite

Can animal personalities save human lives? Evidence for repeatable differences in activity and anxiety in African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei)

Journal Article Applied Animal Behaviour Science · February 1, 2023 Scent-detection animals require an exceptional sense of smell as well as a unique set of behavioural traits. Regardless of species, there are specific characteristics that influence the animal's success in a detection career. However, few studies have test ... Full text Cite

Neural Processes of Emotional Conflict Detection and Prediction of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Clusters in Traumatic Injury Survivors

Journal Article Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy · January 1, 2023 Objective: Given the prevalence and significant burden of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), identifying early predictors of symptom development following trauma is critical. PTSD is a heterogeneous disorder com-prised of distinct symptom clusters—reexp ... Full text Cite

Experiencing racial discrimination increases vulnerability to PTSD after trauma via peritraumatic dissociation.

Journal Article Eur J Psychotraumatol · 2023 Background: Racial discrimination is a traumatic stressor that increases the risk for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but mechanisms to explain this relationship remain unclear. Peritraumatic dissociation, the complex process of disorientation, deper ... Full text Link to item Cite

Radically reframing studies on neurobiology and socioeconomic circumstances: A call for social justice-oriented neuroscience

Journal Article Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience · September 2, 2022 Socioeconomic circumstances are associated with symptoms and diagnostic status of nearly all mental health conditions. Given these robust relationships, neuroscientists have attempted to elucidate how socioeconomic-based adversity “gets under the skin.” Hi ... Full text Cite

The role of pain and socioenvironmental factors on posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in traumatically injured adults: A 1-year prospective study.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · August 2022 Approximately 20% of individuals who experience a traumatic injury will subsequently develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Physical pain following traumatic injury has received increasing attention as both a distinct, functionally debilitating diso ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage and the Neurobiology of Uncertainty in Traumatically Injured Adults

Journal Article Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science · July 1, 2022 Background: Individuals residing in more socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods experience greater uncertainty through insecurity of basic needs such as food, employment, and housing, compared with more advantaged neighborhoods. Although the neurobi ... Full text Cite

Scoring the Life Events Checklist: Comparison of three scoring methods.

Journal Article Psychol Trauma · May 2022 OBJECTIVE: Prior trauma history is a reliable and robust risk predictor for PTSD development. Obtaining an accurate measurement of prior trauma history is critical in research of trauma-related outcomes. The Life Events Checklist (LEC) is a widely used sel ... Full text Link to item Cite

Addressing racial and phenotypic bias in human neuroscience methods.

Journal Article Nat Neurosci · April 2022 Despite their premise of objectivity, neuroscience tools for physiological data collection, such as electroencephalography and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, introduce racial bias into studies by excluding individuals on the basis of phenotypic dif ... Full text Link to item Cite

Emotion Dysregulation Following Trauma: Shared Neurocircuitry of Traumatic Brain Injury and Trauma-Related Psychiatric Disorders.

Journal Article Biol Psychiatry · March 1, 2022 The psychological trauma associated with events resulting in traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important and frequently overlooked factor that may impede brain recovery and worsen mental health following TBI. Indeed, individuals with comorbid posttraumati ... Full text Link to item Cite

Hippocampal Resting-State Functional Connectivity Forecasts Individual Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms: A Data-Driven Approach.

Journal Article Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging · February 2022 BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder, and there is no current accurate prediction of who develops it after trauma. Neurobiologically, individuals with chronic PTSD exhibit aberrant resting-state functional connectivit ... Full text Link to item Cite

Racial Discrimination and Resting-State Functional Connectivity of Salience Network Nodes in Trauma-Exposed Black Adults in the United States.

Journal Article JAMA Netw Open · January 4, 2022 IMPORTANCE: For Black US residents, experiences of racial discrimination are still pervasive and frequent. Recent empirical work has amplified the lived experiences and narratives of Black people and further documented the detrimental effects of racial dis ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neural impact of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage in traumatically injured adults.

Journal Article Neurobiol Stress · November 2021 Nearly 14 percent of Americans live in a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood. Lower individual socioeconomic position (iSEP) has been linked to increased exposure to trauma and stress, as well as to alterations in brain structure and function; how ... Full text Link to item Cite

Racial Discrimination is Associated with Acute Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Predicts Future Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Severity in Trauma-Exposed Black Adults in the United States.

Journal Article J Trauma Stress · October 2021 In the United States, Black residents exposed to a traumatic event are at an increased risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and experiencing more severe symptoms compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts. Although previous work h ... Full text Link to item Cite

Acute White Matter Integrity Post-trauma and Prospective Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms

Journal Article Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · September 29, 2021 Background: Little is known about what distinguishes those who are resilient after trauma from those at risk for developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous work indicates white matter integrity may be a useful biomarker in predicting PTSD. R ... Full text Cite

Stability of hippocampal subfield volumes after trauma and relationship to development of PTSD symptoms.

Journal Article Neuroimage · August 1, 2021 BACKGROUND: The hippocampus plays a central role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) pathogenesis, and the majority of neuroimaging research on PTSD has studied the hippocampus in its entirety. Although extensive literature demonstrates changes in hip ... Full text Link to item Cite

Neighborhood disadvantage is associated with stable deficits in neurocognitive functioning in traumatically-injured adults.

Journal Article Health Place · January 2021 BACKGROUND: In trauma-exposed adults, the relationship between an individual's socioeconomic position (SEP) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been well demonstrated. One potential mechanism by which the stress associated with lower SEPs may imp ... Full text Link to item Cite

Acute Posttrauma Resting-State Functional Connectivity of Periaqueductal Gray Prospectively Predicts Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms.

Journal Article Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging · September 2020 BACKGROUND: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by hyperarousal, avoidance, and intrusive/re-experiencing symptoms. The periaqueductal gray (PAG), which generates behavioral responses to physical and psychological stressors, is also impli ... Full text Link to item Cite

Rapidly training African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) with multiple targets for scent detection.

Journal Article Behav Processes · May 2020 Since 1997, APOPO, a non-profit organization based in Tanzania, has deployed African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) to detect landmines in post-conflict areas. More recent research suggests the pouched rats can also be trained to detect tuberculo ... Full text Link to item Cite

Behavioral skills training in scent detection research: Interactions between trainer and animal behavior.

Journal Article J Appl Behav Anal · July 2019 Animal trainers working in scent detection programs are responsible for arranging training contingencies as well as for observing and recording animal behavior. We provided behavioral skills training (BST) to animal trainers working with scent detection ra ... Full text Link to item Cite