Researchers are comparing differences in brain scans of soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and those without it in hopes of one day being able to use scans to identify the condition.
Researchers from Duke University studied a total of 42 soldiers, both male and female. Their findings will be presented to the World Psychiatric Association congress in Florence.
Soldiers involved in the study had served in Iraq of Afghanistan. One group of 22 had been previously diagnosed with PTSD and the other group of 20 had not. Fifty-two percent of the participants were male.
PTSD is as an anxiety disorder triggered by exposure to traumatic events. Symptoms include intrusive memories of the trauma, avoidant behavior and hyperarousal, where those affected are more likely to perceive a threat in seemingly neutral situations or people. Impaired concentration is also characteristic. Right now, the condition is only diagnosed through an interview with a mental health professional.
Researchers presented each volunteer with photographs of three similar faces, followed by a delay period to allow their brains to retain the information. Then they were shown a single photo of a face and asked if it was the same one they saw before.
About two seconds into the delay period, the soldiers were randomly shown photos irrelevant to the faces ““ either two photos depicting combat scenes from Iraq or Afghanistan, two photos of non-combat (neutral) scenes such as a man playing the trombone, or two digitally scrambled pictures depicting nothing. After a break to allow brain activity to return to normal, the test was repeated 40 times, with no repetition in the photos.
Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans to study the brain patterns of each soldier.
Scientists noted in the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex ““ an area responsible for staying focused ““ that the group without PTSD was far more distracted by the traumatic photos than by the neutral ones.
“This sensitivity to neutral information is consistent with the PTSD symptom of hypervigilance, where those afflicted are on high alert for threats and are more distracted by not only threatening situations that remind them of the trauma, but also by benign situations,” said Dr Rajendra Morey, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Duke University.
“This has not been seen at the brain level before. If further research confirms this preliminary finding, this pattern could be useful in distinguishing the PTSD brain.”
“As technology improves, imaging research is increasingly providing insights into the brains of people with post-traumatic stress disorder, pointing to potential biological markers distinguishing the PTSD-affected brain,” said Dolcos, a co-author of the study, performed at Duke University in Durham, USA.
“The field is still in its infancy, but this raises the possibility that one day we may be able to see the disorder in the body as plainly as we now can see conditions such as heart disease and cancer.”
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