A study of shrapnel brain damage in veterans could help improve treatment of PTSD Shrapnel that caused damage related to the amygdala reduced risk of PTSD One PTSD patient improved after that amygdala brain circuit was treated with a stimulation implant THURSDAY, Sept. 26, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Brain damage that veterans suffered from flying shrapnel has provided a major clue that could lead to better treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says. Veterans who suffered shrapnel damage connected to their amygdala, the fear center of the brain, were less likely to develop PTSD, researchers reported Sept.
24 in the journal Nature Neuroscience . The results suggest that PTSD could be treated by using electrical pulses to disrupt brain networks linked to the amygdala, they added. “This is a very real brain disease, and we can localize it to certain brain circuits,” said corresponding author Dr.
Shan Siddiqi , a psychiatrist in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics. “Unfortunately, people sometimes assume PTSD has to do with how mentally strong or weak a person is, but it has nothing to do with moral character.” Researchers previously have uncovered brain networks to successfully treat depression and addiction using neurostimulation, and have been trying to locate the network associated with PTSD.
For this study, the research team examined 193 patients from the Vietnam Head Injury Study who’d suffered brain inj.
