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PTSD-TBI Research Snapshot: Drs. Robert D. Claar and Damon G. Lamb

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By Michelle Jaffee

New research sheds light on patterns of altered brain activity that appear to be influenced in both post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury, a step toward developing more precise interventions capable of overcoming treatment resistance.

Published in Brain Communications, the study of 109 combat veterans analyzed potential neurophysiological markers of one or both conditions, which often co-occur and share overlapping symptoms. Identifying such biomarkers could help clinicians eventually predict symptom severity, recovery and treatment response over time.

This figure shows that people with higher post-traumatic stress disorder symptom scores tended to have stronger activity coupling between the right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and this relationship was broadly similar across diagnostic groups.
This figure shows that people with higher post-traumatic stress disorder symptom scores tended to have stronger activity coupling between the right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and this relationship was broadly similar across diagnostic groups.

Researchers reported several links between overall symptoms and differences in the brain’s response to emotional images. For example, among patients with more severe symptoms, they found stronger coupling between emotion-related brain regions.

“One of the clearest findings was that higher symptom severity was related to stronger coupling between the amygdala, a region involved in detecting emotionally important stimuli, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region involved in emotion regulation,” said senior author Damon G. Lamb, Ph.D., an assistant professor in UF’s Department of Psychiatry and a researcher at the Brain Rehabilitation Research Center at the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center.

Study participants, who had different combinations of PTSD and mild traumatic brain injury, completed symptom questionnaires and underwent functional MRI while passively viewing images with negative or neutral content. Researchers measured whether and how activity in various brain regions changed during the tasks, as well as how results related to symptoms.

“We hope to validate our findings with larger longitudinal studies to determine whether these brain patterns are reliable treatment biomarkers associated with PTSD and mild traumatic brain injury,” Lamb said.

“Another potential research direction could be to test whether neuromodulation, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, could alleviate symptoms and improve treatment efficacy,” he added.

Read the paper in Brain Communications.