This study, led by Translational Research Institute CEO and Director of Research Professor Carolyn Mountford, demonstrates a number of brain chemicals, including those recently assigned by the team as fucosylated glycans, are significantly altered in people with PTSD.
Studies in patients with PTSD show alterations in brain areas implicated in animal studies, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex, as well as in neurochemical stress response systems, including Cortisol and norepinephrine.
Traumatic stress can change the brain's delicate chemical balance and structure. These effects, which can impact the way we function, can be minor or severe depending on the type of traumatic stress we're dealing with.
PTSD can typically be a lifelong problem for most people, resulting in severe brain damage.
For individuals who continually experience traumatic events, or who relive traumatic memories from their childhood as adults, this means the brain can rewire itself in such a way that sometimes causes us to feel overly stressed, even when there's nothing overt to stress about.
Trauma survivors can capitalize on this plasticity to heal. A traumatized brain tends to experience excessive activation in areas related to fear, and reduced activation in "thinking" areas. Psychotherapy and mindfulness training can reduce activation in the fear center and allow for healthy emotional expression.
Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated significant neurobiologic changes in PTSD. There appear to be 3 areas of the brain that are different in patients with PTSD compared with those in control subjects: the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the medial frontal cortex.
PTSD can develop immediately after someone experiences a disturbing event, or it can occur weeks, months or even years later. PTSD is estimated to affect about 1 in every 3 people who have a traumatic experience, but it's not clear exactly why some people develop the condition and others do not.
So, does PTSD ever go away? No, but with effective evidence-based treatment, symptoms can be managed well and can remain dormant for years, even decades. But because the trauma that evokes the symptoms will never go away, there is a possibility for those symptoms to be “triggered” again in the future.
Without treatment, the psychological symptoms of PTSD are likely to worsen over time. Along with severe depression and anxiety, other serious outcomes may include: Increased suicidal ideation. Problems managing anger and aggression.
Relative risk ratio (RRR) for PTSD associated with a one point drop in age 6 IQ among victims of assaultive violence was 1.04 (95% CI 1.01, 1.06); among victims of other stressors, it was 1.03 (95% CI 0.99, 1.06).
Several lines of evidence support the role of dopamine in the etiology of PTSD including increased urinary and plasma levels of dopamine in individuals with PTSD, and a significant positive correlation between dopamine levels and severity of PTSD (Hammer & Diamond, 1993; Yehuda, Southwick, Giller, Ma, & Mason, 1992).
PTSD patients, especially those who have endured repeated interpersonal trauma (e.g. abuse, torture, combat), usually exhibit low levels of cortisol and serotonin, with high levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, and DHEA-S.
Core neurochemical features of PTSD include abnormal regulation of catecholamine, serotonin, amino acid, peptide, and opioid neurotransmitters, each of which is found in brain circuits that regulate/integrate stress and fear responses.
van der Kolk writes that there are three avenues for recovery: “top down, by talking, (re-) connecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us”; “taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions"; and “bottom up, by allowing the body to have experiences that ...
Previous studies have shown that another brain structure, the hippocampus, is smaller in people with PTSD than in those without the disorder.
In some cases, particularly where it is not treated, PTSD can last a very long time, perhaps the remainder of one's life. Most people with longstanding PTSD find that the symptoms are not steady in their severity. For some people, PTSD symptoms gradually fade over time.
In conclusion, posttraumatic stress disorder after the intense stress is a risk of development enduring personality changes with serious individual and social consequences.
Dissociation-a common feature of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-involves disruptions in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, and perception of the self and the environment.
Feeling jittery, nervous or tense.
Women experiencing PTSD are more likely to exhibit the following symptoms: Become easily startled. Have more trouble feeling emotions, experience numbness. Avoid trauma reminders.
People with PTSD stay in that “fight or flight” mode – leading to an inability to relax and participate fully in life. PTSD can make it difficult to trust others, and survivors may feel numb and distant from other people. Interest in social activities can be affected. Social withdrawal and isolation may occur.
The decreased levels of cortisol, the increased responsiveness of glucocorticoid receptors, the increased sensitivity of the HPA negative feedback inhibition and its progressive sensitization are the neuroendocrine alterations specifically associated with the development of PTSD.
For people who develop PTSD, trauma causes a psychological injury. Certain areas of the brain become hyperactive, while others are less active, creating an imbalance. Parts of the brain that are impacted by trauma: The Amygdala enlarges, stimulating “fight or flight mode.”
PTSD patients whose symptoms increased over time showed accelerated atrophy throughout the brain, particularly brainstem and frontal and temporal lobes. Lastly, for the sample as a whole greater rates of brain atrophy were associated with greater rates of decline in verbal memory and delayed facial recognition.