User:Sidneyisabellejones/sandbox

Looking at Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from a neuroscientific point of view.

Neuroimaging has revealed that the brain of a PTSD patient differs to that of a healthy patient.

Effects on the Hippocampus

Patients suffering from PTSD reveal significant shrinking of the hippocampus in the brain. However, the hippocampus plays a particular role in the brain. It replays memories according to external stimuli, it also allows the patient to differentiate past and present. This implies that alteration of the hippocampus affects the patient's memories, hence flashbacks that many patients that have undergone trauma witness, and their inability to understand that they are in fact, safe.

Therefore, victims of PTSD have traumatic flashbacks when in an environment that has remotely similar elements to that of their trauma. These flashbacks lead to a bodily flight or fight response, even though one is not necessary.

Effects on the Ventromedial Prefrontal cortex

This region of the brain receives emotional signals from the amygdala, and, in a healthy patient, triggers the appropriate response. However, in a PTSD patient, this part of the brain is altered and the individual will have extreme reactions of fear, anger or stress to certain situations.

Effects on the amygdala

This part of the brain is responsible for our emotional responses and for the feeling of fear. Therefore, if the two regions of the brain, the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, that are responsible for regulating the excitation levels of the amygdala that triggers a fear response are deregulated, this is translated through symptoms of PTSD.