New findings on PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
By William Smith
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) impairs an individual’s ability to detect facial expressions according the findings of a new European study.
The impact of this limitation is significant as facial expressions give strong cues and clues to someone’s emotional state and the ability to interpret these cues is vital in social interactions.
This inability can also be found in other psychiatric and neurological disorders such as social anxiety and Korsakoff’s syndrome.
Researchers believe that PTSD changes the way the brain processes particular emotions with the altered processing of emotional cues and that this leads to PTSD limitations.
Dr. Ervin Polac, Dr. Barbara Montagne and Prof. Edward de Haan investigated emotiona processing in a group of war veterans with symptoms that developed after prolonged exposure to traumatic combat-related events.
It is already known that PTSD is associated with difficulties in experiencing, identifying and describing emotions. The new study specifically examined the participant’s ability to recognise particular emotional facial expressions.
The participants watched short video clips of emotional faces representing one of the six basic emotions. These emotions are anger, fear, happiness, surprise, disgust and sadness.
When compared to healthy subjects, the participants with PTSD were less able to recognise two particular emotions, fear and sadness. This is the first study to show impairment in the processing of specific emotions in PTSD.
It is believed by the researchers that this knowledge will give further insights into the disorder and also initiate new methods to assess PTSD.
Experts believe that a more detailed prognostic model for PTSD can be developed which will improve therapeutic interventions for this disorder.
Source: Elsevier
