Understanding and Improving Treatment for Post traumatic Stress Disorder

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a kind of psychiatric condition that is developed in an individual after they experience severe trauma and exposure that can lead to issues in thinking, emotion management, and behavior. PTSD is important to study because it impacts different types of people, like veterans, survivors of assault, and even victims of disaster,  involving a risk of suicide and disorders that can impact someone’s mental and physical state for life (Mann et al., 2024). Studies in neuroscience show that PTSD is both a psychological and a biological condition because it can affect the structure and the function of the brain. The regions that are impacted by PTSD are the amygdala, hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex which also play a role in regulating fear, memory, and emotion. Research shows that people with PTSD have increased amygdala activity, a reduced size of their hippocampus, and also they have decreased function in their prefrontal cortex, which makes it difficult to regulate fear and stress properly (Bremner, 2006; Pitman et al., 2012). Increased levels of stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine along with dysregulation of the HPA axis increase stress responses overall (Bremner, 2006). Put together, all these changes show that PTSD can cause serious impacts to the nervous system, making it an important area for neuroscience research.

The best treatments for PTSD are psychotherapy and pharmacological treatments. Some patients use cognitive behavioral therapy focused on trauma in order for them to process traumatic memories and reduce uncomfortable symptoms. Pharmacotherapy is another treatment method where patients use medications to relieve their symptoms and regulate moods and anxiety (Mann et al., 2024). These treatments for PTSD can be helpful to an extent but they have limitations since some patients don’t fully respond to these therapies and the relapse rates for PTSD are very high, impacting the patient. Also, the current methods for treatment don’t properly target underlying issues like the neural circuit dysfunction, weak connection between the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, that’s caused by PTSD (Fenster et al., 2018). Another limit with these treatments is that they have a lack of biological markers or checkpoint to track the length of the disease, making it difficult to give accurate assessments and the needed care or diagnosis (Maguire et al., 2021). PTSD also has some similar symptoms to other conditions like depression or anxiety, and this makes treatment even more complicated, pushing the need for precise treatment methods based more off neuroscience. 

To improve the treatment strategies of PTSD, I think using a combination of two research methods like neuroimaging and longitudinal research methods would be best to use to study PTSD more in detail and apply it to patients. Using neuroimaging technology like functional magnetic resonance imaging can be used to examine the data and analyze the trends in the primary regions of the brain (amygdala, hippocampus, and neural dysregulation) controlled by PTSD, while exposing them to stimuli that is related to the trauma that first started their PTSD. Using this method, researchers will be able to easily identify neural patterns that end up being associated with the trauma or that impact symptom severity. The other research method, called longitudinal research, can be used to track and collect data of the patient before and after they are exposed to stimuli related to their trauma, and this can be used to see any changes in the HPA axis or in genetic/epigenetic markers (Yehuda & LeDoux, 2007). Another method that can be used are animal models, to study how brain cells grow over time and how they create brain connection changes since stress can impact the development of these (Fenster et al., 2018). By implementing these methods we can better understand how PTSD works and improve treatment in the future.

The Brain Treatment and Research Center should try investing in PTSD research because it is a common and serious condition that doesn’t have a very effective existing treatment currently. PTSD is different because it’s caused by trauma, and can help the world understand how experience impacts and makes changes to the brain. The current information collected hasn’t provided enough information to create a working treatment for all people who experience PTSD. By promoting PTSD research that combines brain scanning and behavior responses, the Center can create a treatment that doesn’t just target the symptoms of PTSD but instead its underlying causes. In the future, a treatment like this can help reduce the suffering of patients and improve their quality of life overall.

References

Bremner, J. D. (2006). Traumatic stress: effects on the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), 445–461. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17290802/

Fenster, R. J., Lebois, L. A. M., Ressler, K. J., & Suh, J. (2018). Brain circuit dysfunction in post-traumatic stress disorder: from mouse to man. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 19(9), 535–551. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-018-0039-7

Maguire, D., Watt, J., Armour, C., Milanak, M., Lagdon, S., Lamont, J. V., Kurth, M. J., Fitzgerald, P., Moore, T., & Ruddock, M. W. (2021). Post-traumatic stress disorder: A biopsychosocial case-control study investigating peripheral blood protein biomarkers. Biomarkers in Neuropsychiatry, 5, 100042. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bionps.2021.100042

Mann, S. K., Marwaha, R., & Torrico, T. J. (2024, February 25). Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK559129/

Pitman, R. K., Rasmusson, A. M., Koenen, K. C., Shin, L. M., Orr, S. P., Gilbertson, M. W., Milad, M. R., & Liberzon, I. (2012). Biological studies of post-traumatic stress disorder. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(11), 769–787. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3339

Yehuda, R., & LeDoux, J. (2007). Response Variation following Trauma: A Translational Neuroscience Approach to Understanding PTSD. Neuron, 56(1), 19–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2007.09.006