Via Ken Pope

*Science*: Neuropsychogy of Resilience & emotional trauma; predicting how people respond to stress

Tomorrow’s issue of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s journal *Science* (21 August 2009. Volume 325, Number 5943) includes an article: “The Telltale Amygdala.”

Here are some excerpts:

[begin excerpts]

Brain scans of Israeli paramedics suggest that it’s possible to predict how well an individual will respond to stress.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University have performed an unusual prospective study to see if they could identify brain differences between emotionally resilient people and those who respond poorly to traumatic events.

<snip>

They scanned them with functional magnetic resonance imaging while flashing photographs of military medical scenes.

The recruits were also scored on stress-related symptoms such as anxiety and difficulty sleeping.

Eighteen months later, all the paramedics had been through rough emotional experiences dealing with combat casualties.

The scientists, led by brain imager Roee Admon, again put them through the brain-scan experiment.

Reporting online 5 August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that the paramedics who reported the largest increase in stress symptoms had also showed the most activity in the amygdala–the seat of fear in the brain–in the first test.

<snip>

The study shows that these factors “can be sensitively identified with brain imaging in otherwise healthy subjects,” says psychiatrist Amit Etkin of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Remain resilient. Bounce, baby, bounce.

Have a wonderful weekend!

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Guide To Self, Inc.