Plumbing the depths of PTSD

A feature in The New Yorker explores how Daniela Schiller, PhD, from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Brain Imaging Core in New York City, has approached a kind of memory erasure for people who have suffered greatly from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the aid of cutting-edge neuroimaging.

More than 5 percent of people in the U.S. are estimated to have experienced PTSD, from victims of violent crime to war veterans. Addiction, anxiety and phobias are also causes of stress for many people and treatments, even if they work in the beginning, can lead to failure in the face of a relapse. The feature explores a personal story involving the lead researcher’s father, a survivor of the Holocaust.

The piece makes note of current PET and functional MRI research monitoring blood flow and metabolic alterations and newer techniques that pinpoint changes in complex molecular interactions in the brain that help us create, keep and recall an assortment of memories.