Sensitivity to stress-relevant stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder

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Abstract

This study investigated perceptual and physiological sensitivity to stimuli semantically associated with trauma in 10 Vietnam combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We used an auditory recognition task in which subjects were presented with target words related to Vietnam stressors (e.g., Firefight), phonetically similar words (e.g., Firefly), and neutral words (e.g., Fingertips). Skin conductance responses (SCRs) occuring to detected targets were also measured. Ten combat and 10 noncombat veterans with other psychiatric disorders served as control subjects. We hypothesized that, in comparison to controls. PTSD subjects should: (a) detect more stress targets than neutral targets, (b) exhibit larger SCRs to detected stress targets than to detected neutral targets, and (c) misperceive phonetically similar words as stress words. Although all groups detected more stress than neutral targets, only PTSD subjects exhibited enhanced SCRs to detected stress targets. This suggests that retrieval of trauma-related information from memory is accompanied by physiological responses consistent with fear in subjects with PTSD.

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    Preparation of this manuscript was supported by National Institutes of Health BRSG grant RR-5366 awarded to the first author.

    The authors wish to thank Ivan N. Aubuchon, Gary Dandurand, Summer H. Garte, Sonny Keretsky, and David V. Trandel for their assistance.

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