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

nytimes.com

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

#71

Post by DanBC »

PeterisP wrote: post #69
DougWebb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physic…

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Vermetten/publicat...

> Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common disorder associated with emotional dysregulation and other symptoms that have been hypothesized to be related to dysfunction of limbic brain areas including hippocampus and amygdala. The purpose ofthis study was to measure hippocampal and amygdala volumes in BPD. Hippocampal and amygdala volumes were measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in 10 patients with BPD and 23 control subjects. Patients with BPD had a 21.9% smaller mean amygdala volume and a 13.1% smaller hippocampal volume, compared to controls. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that alterations in the hippocampus and amygdala are associated with BPD.

Here they see changes in the structure of the brain.

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

#72

Post by InclinedPlane »

slr555 wrote: post #44

The title of this article extremely poorly chosen. The DSM-5 criteria for PTSD defines this condition in terms such that a great number of patients meet the criteria who have never been exposed to blasts of any kind. Yes, there may be significant numbers of patients like those the article describes who suffer from a previously uncategorized blast injury phenomenon that has sometimes been attributed to PTSD but the au…

Yup.

Moreover, it's possible, and in fact quite likely, to have both.

Having an IED go off near you might result in blast injury to your brain, which produces one set of symptoms. But it's also pretty likely to cause PTSD as well. That sort of thing is a harrowing experience, more so if you witnessed someone you cared about getting killed or injured in the blast as well, that's an easy candidate for setting you up for PTSD. But the symptoms you experience afterward will end up being a mix of both conditions.

I find it interesting that people seemed to have figured out "shell shock" fairly early on simply intuitively. But whereas early treatments focused on it as an almost mechanical thing, and something to be overcome so that soldiers could be put back into the fight, it took a greater sensitivity to psychological issues to realize that PTSD was also a factor though in so doing there was a tendency to attribute all symptoms to PTSD. Now we've rediscovered shell-shock, but I hope we don't forget that PTSD is real and important as well. And we don't view shell-shock as simply a hurdle to overcome so we can get the greatest battlefield efficiency out of wounded soldiers. We've come a long way since WWI in how we treat soldiers, and I hope we don't regress.

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

#73

Post by Dylan16807 »

DanBC wrote: post #71
PeterisP wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physic…

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Vermetten/publicat... > Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common disorder associated with emotional dysregulation and other symptoms that have been hypothesized to be related to dysfunction of limbic brain areas including hippocampus and amygdala. The purpose ofthis study was to measure hippocampal and amygdala volumes in BPD. Hippocampal and amygdala volumes were me…

Yes, a lot of disorders involve physical changes. But that doesn't tell us if the physical changes are cause, effect, or both wrt the mental changes.

The question at hand is whether you can have thought patterns that cause structural/functional changes to happen.

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

#74

Post by hueving »

ht85 wrote: post #38
kmm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a useful distinction. That's like saying all software is hardware because the bits and bytes are stored in magnetic moments on hard drives etc... Or that biology and chemistry are the same thing because all living things are made of chemicals. Sure, there's some overlap, but the fields are still very distinct. Not to mention that the physiology of the mind isn't very well known. Physicalism of the mind isn…

Except comparing body to hardware and mind to software doesn't make much sense. If you want a better comparison, you could compare the mind to what happens within the CPU. Other chips would be other organs/subsystems, connected by veins, nerves and various canals (power and data buses). Then you'd have peripherals (limbs) with their firmware (reflexes), and sensors (eyes). All of those communicate together and have s…

That analogy isn't very apt because the CPU by itself doesn't have memory.

The CPU+motherboard+ram+hard disks is closer to the brain. You could argue that power supply and the speakers, microphone, nic, and webcam are like the energy supply and inputs to the brain though.

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

#75

Post by PeterisP »

DanBC wrote: post #71
PeterisP wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physic…

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric_Vermetten/publicat... > Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common disorder associated with emotional dysregulation and other symptoms that have been hypothesized to be related to dysfunction of limbic brain areas including hippocampus and amygdala. The purpose ofthis study was to measure hippocampal and amygdala volumes in BPD. Hippocampal and amygdala volumes were me…

Actually, not really, the paper doesn't say that - it seems to explicitly limit its findings to an association and nothing more.

They see changes in the structure of the brain and they see changes in behavior (BPD), but they're clearly not saying that BPD caused these structural changes - they list both causal directions as some of possible hypothesis (altered amygdala/hippocampus causing BPD and/or BPD-related experiences causing these alterations in amygdala/hippocampus), in addition to other possible scenarios e.g. the fact that all of their BPD-group was on psychotropic drugs could also have been a cause for the observed changes, etc. They also aren't making any conclusions about a possible link between childhood abuse and BPD (or link between abuse and these brain changes) beyond the fact that they chose a set of 10 subjects that all had both BPD and suffered abuse; they're not even discussing a correlation as their data isn't sufficient to say anything about that.

All the observations in this paper certainly are compatible with a hypothetical scenario where these brain changes cause BPD (or indeed, are BPD) but it was some factor other than emotional trauma that caused the observed changes in their brains. I don't know if it is that way, but this particular paper also doesn't give any evidence to support or deny it.

[edit] It even seems that they don't even state that there was a change in their brains - instead, they observe a difference between BPD patients and the control group; but it would also be consistent with a hypothesis that these patients had smaller hippocampus/amygdala e.g. since birth, and simply having that property (instead of a change) was a risk factor predisposing them to suffering BPD symptoms later in life; and the authors acknowledge this as a possible option in their conclusions.

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

#76

Post by Retric »

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…

Emotions are generally non local chemical releases in the brain. Stress, fear, love, hate, all bathe most of the brain in the relevant chemical cocktail. So, no it's more than just local memory formation.

On that note, memory's footprint is all over the brain. Learning judo is more than just filling up a psudo HDD with relevant information.

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

#77

Post by cpncrunch »

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…

Yes, it is pretty well established that cortisol causes the hippocampus to shrink [1]. Studies also show that the hippocampus shrinkage in PTSD is reversible with treatment [2].

That is just one example, but there are quite a lot of other long-term structural changes in the brain after chronic stress.

[1] http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-322... [2] http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/0006-3223...

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

#78

Post by Razengan »

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…

> 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?

I see where you're coming from, but in the case of biological brains and their physiology, the hardware IS the software, no?

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

#79

Post by archeopterix »

Mz wrote: post #57
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.

I knew someone with PTSD following a brutal rape. He choked her during the rape and she was covered in bruises, etc afterwards. For at least the next two years, she suffered from repeated bouts of bronchitis and yeast infections. She finally insisted the doctor run tests and not just give her a standing prescription for yeast meds (this was before they were available as OTC meds) and they found an infection was the r…

Meta-reply:

  (Edited. I fucking hate autocorrect sometimes.)
Why do people compulsively inform the internet that they edited their posts after the fact. No one cares. Everyone here can see the edit link.

So I quoted the parent, so what?

If you edited your post, after a reply, each have the opportunity to either further edit, or even delete irrelevant posts. Deleting your post and re-posting can quickly disconnect your comment from bogus replies that jumped the gun, and landed in between the first post and the edit.

We all can see how long the post has been sitting, and if it's only been there a matter of minutes, an edit would not be surprising.

Do people feel guilty and dishonest about making edits to their posts? Why?

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

#80

Post by kordless »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #42
adammunich wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is a long medical history of treating things in isolation in order to understand fundamental aspects of biology and such. While the rest of science has more or less moved on from this mindset, the medical field hasn't fully yet.

It's called measuring things. It's what we do, after all.
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