How The Amygdalas Emotional Function Can Affect Sufferers...

Review on How the Amygdala’s Emotional Function can Affect Sufferers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a relevant common mental disorder as it may affect approximately 2-3% of the population at any point (Green, 2003). There are numerous literatures on how a capacious amount of traumatic stress can affect the function of the brain, as the remembrance of a traumatic experience can affect attention and memory in the present which may lead to present day harm (Van der Kolk, 2006). Approximately thirty percent of individuals can develop PTSD following a traumatic event, however, certain events have higher rates (such as rape) (Acierno et al., 1999, cited in Elzinger and Bremner,†¦show more content†¦Johnson et al (2012) claims that the pathology of PTSD, is the natural response of threat reaction is heightened and fails to decrease and thus becomes an issue to an individual’s psychological and physical well-being. This follows on from Van der Kolk (2006) who stated that regions in the brain that accesses the memory of an event also supports intense emotion which affects sensory and motor functions within the Central Nervous System (CNS). This literature suggests that although PTSD is classed as anxiety, it is the memory involvement in which causes the physical stress reaction. Praag (2004) theorised that a sufferer of PTSD cannot easily erase memories of a certain stressful trauma. This follows on from Liberzon et al’s (1999) study that the repetitious memory recall of a traumatic episode is a symptom of PTSD. This dysfunction of Memory involves certain brain regions, including the amygdaloidal complex and hippocampal formation. In Liberzon et al’s study on 11 control subjects and 14 combat veterans diagnosed with PTSD, placing them in stressful situations using a single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) machine found activation in the left amygdala on the PTSD sufferers but not with the control subjects. This suggests that the amygdala responds to unpleasant stimuli in individuals suffering with memories of a past traumatic episode. Other brain imaging studies have found a link between encoding