New research contributes to the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder

Medical Network March 21, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin School of Medicine may have found an improvement in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Common treatments: reduce the response to fear symptoms by changing the way the brain learns.

In a study of 46 healthy adults, the researchers gave participants a noise stimulus instead of stimulation and observed their emotional response. The participants' brain activity was then measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Their emotional response is measured by how much they sweat from their hands.

Replacing a terrible electric shock with noise is accompanied by a stronger activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex than a simple electric shock. Replacing the sense of vibration with a simple tone also reduces the emotional response of the participant to the picture of the shock-related picture of the participant's second day of testing.

In this study, Dunsmoor's team randomly divided participants into two groups – one with electrical stimulation turned off and the other with noise instead of electrical stimulation. On the first day of the study, both groups received an electric shock and a picture stimulus. These groups of patients were then subjected to picture stimulation in the event of an electric shock being turned off and/or noise was replaced instead of an electric shock. The next day, both groups received brain activity and detection of emotional responses to images of fear conditions.

The researchers used fMRI scans to measure participants' brain activity on fear condition pictures. They also measured the emotional response of participants to the threat of electric shock based on the amount of sweat recorded on their hands.