What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study • Hacker News Board

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#61

Post by nommm-nommm » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #55

Madmallard wrote: post #35

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know: There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative s…

It's not so simple - while it is obvious that physical damage to the brain can cause psychological damage to the mind (e.g. lobotomy), it's not clear (at least to me) if purely psychological damage (e.g. horrific emotional events, war situations with no physical effect to you ) can disrupt the physical functioning of the brain. Change in balance of some neurotransmitters can cause symptoms of mental illness - but can…

>can purely psychological events (i.e. what you observe and contemplate) cause permanent alterations to that chemical balance, cellular dysfunction, structural damage in the brain, etc?

I think so. Amblyopia is an example of structural changes in the brain based on what you observe. It generally happens early in life when the brain is more plastic but it proves it is possible. There is also evidence that amblyopia may be able to be treated in adulthood.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#62

Post by joyeuse6701 » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

jcoffland wrote: post #47

The desire for such a distinction is strong. We prefer to attribute illness to physical causes because in our society we blame the patient for mental but not for physical illness. This disparity drives the push to find physical causes to which we can more comfortably redirect blame. Such as DNA, leptin, bacteria, enzymes, etc. It is wise to be skeptical of any new findings which fit too well with human desires and th…

Agreed, it is certainly worth the skepticism, but also worth the skepticism behind the medical communities insistence that it wasn't related. One aspect of history that always concerned me was why 'modern war' had the effect it had compared to antiquity. The horrors of war have been repeated historically, but not like this.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#63

Post by DanBC » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

adammunich wrote: post #39

Madmallard wrote: post #35

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know: There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative s…

I never understood why people rarely take this approach. It's not as if these things occur in isolation.

It's not that rare - it's made it to UK government national strategy advice over five years ago in "No Health Without Mental Health" which talks about the importance of improving physical health for people with mental illness[1] and improving mental health for people with physical illness.

[1] for a variety of reasons people with severe mental illness die about 20 years earlier than the general population.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#64

Post by Mz » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #55

Madmallard wrote: post #35

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know: There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative s…

It's not so simple - while it is obvious that physical damage to the brain can cause psychological damage to the mind (e.g. lobotomy), it's not clear (at least to me) if purely psychological damage (e.g. horrific emotional events, war situations with no physical effect to you ) can disrupt the physical functioning of the brain. Change in balance of some neurotransmitters can cause symptoms of mental illness - but can…

When he was really little, my oldest son was prone to having tantrums. When he was four years old, he was literally hopping mad one day and this resulted in him literally bursting a blood vessel. He developed a sudden, really severe nosebleed. He was prone to nosebleeds anyway, but this was one of the worst ones he ever had and I was concerned for a bit that I would need to take him to the ER because I had trouble getting it to stop, in spite of experience and knowledge about this issue.

The experience was incredibly shocking for him. The idea that his feelings could actually cause him direct physical harm really freaked him out. Furthermore, the event caused his tantrum to end very suddenly. The tantrum came to a screeching halt, so to speak. Without any training, he was able to use this experience as a form of biofeedback. He had felt something in his brain when it stopped and that allowed him to find some means to interrupt the runaway process at subsequent events.

He didn't like being mad, so being mad made him mad about the fact that he was mad and it created a positive feedback look that caused his anger to just go off the rails. He stopped having tantrums following this incident.

I think, yes, psychological things can literally have direct physical impact. We know it can do things like raise your blood pressure. This is an ordinary thing. With extreme enough experiences, I see no reason why it wouldn't impact the brain in a meaningful way with long term consequences

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#65

Post by riprowan » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:05 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #55

Madmallard wrote: post #35

Or, get this, and this is super radical of an idea I know: There is not much of a separation between physical and psychological in the first place. Every part of the body is interconnected--as people develop disease, often times mental symptoms develop secondarily so. Depression and anxiety are super common in all sorts of illness states. There are numerous studies showing cellular dysfunction and rampant oxidative s…

It's not so simple - while it is obvious that physical damage to the brain can cause psychological damage to the mind (e.g. lobotomy), it's not clear (at least to me) if purely psychological damage (e.g. horrific emotional events, war situations with no physical effect to you ) can disrupt the physical functioning of the brain. Change in balance of some neurotransmitters can cause symptoms of mental illness - but can…

Isn't it well-established that learning of any sort produces physical change in the brain?

Why would experienced trauma be any different from any other extremely powerful (and repeated) (yet traumatic) learning experience, thus causing permanent change in the brain to "capture" and "remember" the incident like any other powerful learning experience?

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#66

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:09 PM UTC

rntz wrote: post #58

PeterisP wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so simple - while it is obvious that physical damage to the brain can cause psychological damage to the mind (e.g. lobotomy), it's not clear (at least to me) if purely psychological damage (e.g. horrific emotional events, war situations with no physical effect to you ) can disrupt the physical functioning of the brain. Change in balance of some neurotransmitters can cause symptoms of mental illness - but can…

If a permanent change in your psychology did not correspond with some permanent change in your physical person, then what would there be that was causing the change in your psychology? Some non-physical "soul" or "mind"? All psychological facts have physical correlates (in philosophy of mind, this is called "supervenience"). The only limit is our ability to measure things. As our ability to measure our own brains and…

As I said, the question (answered by others) is about structural changes. Any memory is formed by changing something in the brain, but forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain; forming memories and having preferences (and changing them!) is what the brain does; perhaps the quantity of memories affects the structure of the brain or alters its functioning/learning, but generally the content of memories will not.

Psychological facts having physical correlates isn't the answer - to use a wrong-but-useful analogy; it's clear that hardware can inappropriately alter/damage software in many different ways, but in what ways software can/cannot damage or alter the normal functioning of the hardware? The other answers give some examples where this can happen - are there more direct ways?

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#67

Post by DougWebb » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #66

rntz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a permanent change in your psychology did not correspond with some permanent change in your physical person, then what would there be that was causing the change in your psychology? Some non-physical "soul" or "mind"? All psychological facts have physical correlates (in philosophy of mind, this is called "supervenience"). The only limit is our ability to measure things. As our ability to measure our own brains and…

As I said, the question (answered by others) is about structural changes. Any memory is formed by changing something in the brain, but forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain; forming memories and having preferences (and changing them!) is what the brain does; perhaps the quantity of memories affects the structure of the brain or alters its functioning…

forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain

Maybe not any that we are currently able to measure, but something's got to be changing. As an analogy, consider your computer: you could open it up, look inside, and feel that temperatures of different parts change over time, but you can't tell what it's doing or how well it is working just by looking at it. Even with fancy electrical equipment you'd have a hard time determining what's going on, beyond detecting that there's a lot of signal activity flowing around. To really see what's happening you need access through the software, and we just don't have that kind of access to the human mind.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#68

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

riprowan wrote: post #65

PeterisP wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so simple - while it is obvious that physical damage to the brain can cause psychological damage to the mind (e.g. lobotomy), it's not clear (at least to me) if purely psychological damage (e.g. horrific emotional events, war situations with no physical effect to you ) can disrupt the physical functioning of the brain. Change in balance of some neurotransmitters can cause symptoms of mental illness - but can…

Isn't it well-established that learning of any sort produces physical change in the brain? Why would experienced trauma be any different from any other extremely powerful (and repeated) (yet traumatic) learning experience, thus causing permanent change in the brain to "capture" and "remember" the incident like any other powerful learning experience?

Learning a fact physically "records" the fact in the brain, but is it well-established that powerful learning experiences can cause changes to the overall functioning of the brain?

I mean, not the physical changes that amount to "now your motor neurons have changed so that they swing a golf club more accurately" but physical changes that are like "now your motor system or learning system or the regulation of something seemingly unrelated is structurally different because you've been seeing/hearing/thinking these things" ?

I'm not talking about a memory "subsystem" being changed so that it now contains and remembers the incident; that's the usual function of it; I'm talking about the memory (or other) subsystem being changed so that it is now somehow fundamentally altered, processes things differently from its normal function, or fails to process something that it could before.

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#69

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:35 PM UTC

DougWebb wrote: post #67

PeterisP wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, the question (answered by others) is about structural changes. Any memory is formed by changing something in the brain, but forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain; forming memories and having preferences (and changing them!) is what the brain does; perhaps the quantity of memories affects the structure of the brain or alters its functioning…

forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain Maybe not any that we are currently able to measure, but something's got to be changing. As an analogy, consider your computer: you could open it up, look inside, and feel that temperatures of different parts change over time, but you can't tell what it's doing or how well it is working just by looking at it. Eve…

I still don't understand if you're really claiming what I feel you're claiming, that is, saying that "forming this memory doesn't cause any meaningful changes to the general physical functioning of the brain" is false?

It's not a question of being able to measure - I believe that we can measure e.g. synapses being strengthened and weakened as a result of learning skills; but that these changes don't change the physical functioning; it's just part of their normal functioning and it functioned exactly as well before and after - the behavior is different but physically equivalent.

For what I mean as a "meaningful change to the physical functioning", consider your computer - deleting all the software and installing a different operating system would not be a meaningful change to the physical functioning; the temperatures, electric charge and magnetic properties of the involved parts would be very different, but that doesn't matter as all the physical parts would still function in the same normal way although the screen would be displaying very different signals.

On the other hand, a software program that manages to physically disable or re-enable parts of some chip in a way that's not normally possible through software, blow a fuse in a hard drive or trigger a processor bug that "bricks" the processor - those would be the kind of changes to the general physical functioning I'm talking about. In what cases do we have such changes to the physical functioning of (parts of) the brain? Changes that are substantially different from any changes that the brain "does to itself" in the course of normal operation?

Re: What If PTSD Is More Physical Than Psychological? Evidence from new study

#70

Post by eric_h » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 10:37 PM UTC

PeterWhittaker wrote: post #29

parasubvert wrote: post #26

I found this article interesting but frustrating. Conflating PTSD (a mental illness that is caused by traumatic experience) with concussive traumatic brain injury isn't helpful. I kept thinking it would be more interesting (and aligned to the headline) to look at PTSD sufferers brains when they didn't have a known physical injury to their brains.

Ah, but you seemed to have the point about many of these injuries being non-concussive, in the sense of not causing concussion. This is an additional mechanism, heretofore unidentified, causing a significantly different injury than concussion.

I'm not convinced that the injury is significantly different. The mechanics certainly are: rather than the the brain trauma being caused by the brain bouncing off the skull, it's because the whole system is hit by a wave of pressure, but the end result is likely quite similar, though perhaps magnified when subject to an explosion (a holistic TBI, if you will).

The difference, I suspect, is that rather than the injury being confined to a specific place that has a lesion in the brain, it's rather the entire brain that gets affected.

I was in a car accident ~7 years ago that effectively erased 5 days of my life from my memory, and took me 6 months to fully recover from (though I suspect I'm still not quite the same as I was before the accident, but as far as anyone else can tell I am). The only physical remnant from that accident is a small scar on my scalp.

One of the things I learned from the doctors that attempted to assess the damage to my brain is that the number of TBIs caused by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan very much informed and changed the way that doctors treat TBIs here in the states.

Also, always wear a seat belt, whatever the circumstances. I'd be dead if I hadn't been wearing one.