Sociology > Depression > Exposure To Trauma Can Affect Brain Function In Healthy People Several Years After Event
| Topic: |
Sociology > Depression |
| User: |
"Tim Silva" |
| Date: |
15 May 2007 09:18:21 PM |
| Object: |
Exposure To Trauma Can Affect Brain Function In Healthy People Several Years After Event |
Article Print and Audio: http://www.mooshee.com/article-2996482.htm
Newsfeed: http://www.mooshee.com/newsfeed.php
-----------------------------------------------------------
mooshee.com - Exposure to trauma may create enough changes in the
brain to sensitize people to overreact to an innocuous facial gesture
years later, even in people who don't have a stress-related disorder,
says new research. It appears that proximity to high-intensity traumas
can have long lasting effects on the brain and behavior of healthy
people without causing a current clinical disorder. But these subtle
changes could increase susceptibility to mental health problems later
on. These findings are reported in the May issue of Emotion, published
by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Evidence that trauma can have long-term effects on the brains of
healthy individuals was demonstrated by measuring adults' reactions to
emotional stimuli several years after witnessing a trauma, said lead
author Barbara Ganzel, PhD, and colleagues. In the experiment, 22
healthy adults viewed fearful and calm faces while undergoing
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure their
bilateral amygdala activity (part of the brain that judges emotional
intensity, and that forms and stores emotional memories) between 3.5
and 4 years after September 11, 2001.
All of the participants had some level of exposure to the events of
September 11. The authors wanted to determine whether close proximity
to a traumatic event - September 11 - sensitized parts of the brain to
emotional stimuli 41 and 48 months after the terrorist attacks. Eleven
of the participants were within 1.5 miles of the World Trade Center on
September 11, 2001 and the other 11 participants lived at least 200
miles away [control group]. The control group - those participants
living at least 200 miles from New York on 9/11/01 - subsequently
moved to the New York metropolitan area at the time of the MRI
scanning.
According to the study, participants who were within 1.5 miles of the
World Trade Center on 9/11 had significantly higher bilateral amygdala
activity to fearful versus calm faces compared to those who were
living more than 200 miles away. These results show that exposure to
traumatic events in the past was associated with emotional responses
several years later in people who were close to the initial trauma.
Yet, the participants did not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of
PTSD, depression or anxiety at time of imaging. All the participants
were screened for psychiatric, medical and neurological
illnesses. ...cont.
http://www.mooshee.com/article-2996482.htm
Tim Silva
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
