PTSD leaves physical footprints on the brain

PTSD leaves physical footprints on the brain
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, July 27, 2008


At a recent conference for some of the area's leading neurologists, San Francisco physicist Norbert Schuff captured his colleagues' attention when he presented colorful brain images of U.S. soldiers who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The yellow areas, Schuff explained during his presentation at the city's Veterans Affairs Medical Center, showed where the hippocampus, which plays major roles in short-term memory and emotions, had atrophied. The red swatches marked hyperfusion - increased blood flow - in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for conflict resolution and decision-making. Compared with a soldier without the affliction, the PTSD brain had lost 5 to 10 percent of its gray matter volume, indicating yet more neuron damage.

Schuff, who was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt just as colorful as the brain images he'd brought, reminded his colleagues that while his findings were preliminary and the trials ongoing, researchers were at least inching closer to finding the biological markers that distinguish a brain affected by PTSD. As the technology of brain imaging improves and the resulting data are refined, doctors believe that one day they will be able to look at a computer screen and see PTSD as clearly as they now see a brain tumor.

"But we're still in the infancy of neuroimaging," Schuff cautioned later in his office. "Do you get PTSD because you have a small hippocampus? Or does a small hippocampus mean you'll develop PTSD? That, we still don't know."
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