Understanding the physical change is only one part of PTSD

Understanding the physical changes is only one part of PTSD
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 22, 2013

It is a wonderful thing scientists are doing on PTSD. They are proving that what comes after traumatic events is in fact in the survivors' heads. They have been doing research on this for over 40 years but most have just been repeats of the older studies proving whatever outcome they intend it to provide. The only new thing to come out of all the "research" has been found in brain scans. They have actually been able to provide scientific proof that trauma does change the brain in many. What they have not been able to do is fully understand and appreciate the significance of the other part of what lives in the minds of survivors. Their souls

Understanding the physical change is only one part of PTSD. The other part is knowing the difference between what the body does and what the soul does.

Brain circuit can tune anxiety
Anne Trafton
MIT News Office
August 21, 2013

New findings may help neuroscientists pinpoint better targets for antianxiety treatments.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Anxiety disorders, which include posttraumatic stress disorder, social phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder, affect 40 million American adults in a given year. Currently available treatments, such as antianxiety drugs, are not always effective and have unwanted side effects.

To develop better treatments, a more specific understanding of the brain circuits that produce anxiety is necessary, says Kay Tye, an assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences and member of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory.

“The targets that current antianxiety drugs are acting on are very nonspecific. We don’t actually know what the targets are for modulating anxiety-related behavior,” Tye says.

In a step toward uncovering better targets, Tye and her colleagues have discovered a communication pathway between two brain structures — the amygdala and the ventral hippocampus — that appears to control anxiety levels. By turning the volume of this communication up and down in mice, the researchers were able to boost and reduce anxiety levels.

Lead authors of the paper, which appears in the Aug. 21 issue of Neuron, are technical assistant Ada Felix-Ortiz and postdoc Anna Beyeler. Other authors are former research assistant Changwoo Seo, summer student Christopher Leppla and research scientist Craig Wildes.
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There is the event. Each cause of a traumatic event is much different and so are the outcomes but scientists tend to lump them all together.

There is what nature causes. Tornadoes, hurricanes, fires and floods can cause PTSD. This type is different from what humans causes.

Humans can cause events accidentally, like a car accident but they can also cause the same outcome on purpose. We've all read stories on someone driving into a crowd of people.

Humans can cause harm on purpose to someone they are in contact with on a daily basis, as in the cases of verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse but they end up doing a different type of damage than what a stranger can do with one contact.

Those are just your average humans living day to day but then there are other types that come with their jobs.

Firefighters and EMTs put their lives on the line everyday facing traumatic events others go through at the same time they are experiencing their own traumatic events just doing their jobs. Still the type of PTSD these two groups end up with are not the same because firefighters have to battle fires that could kill them.

Then there are the participants in the event itself. Police officers and war fighters. In their cases, they are humans first, then responders but they are also required to use force to stop someone from making things worse.

In a split second they must decide to shoot or wait. That decision determines the outcome and if they decide wrong, someone else can get killed or they could kill someone they didn't need to.

The differences between all groups involved with traumatic events must be included in any true research because there is what the body does and what the trauma does afterwards.

When they are trying to heal the most damage done is not because of the event but what the event does to the way they see themselves and others afterwards.