Clinical Brown Bag

Stephanie Block

Thursday, February 21, 2013, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
3021  East Hall

Event Information

Abstract:
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a significant issue in the military today, affecting 13.8% of veterans that serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. Recent studies have found PTSD to be associated with cognitive deficits such as attentional impairment. PTSD patients have deficits on continuous performance tasks, which are often used in ADHD diagnosis, and they show attentional biases to threat. PTSD patients also show altered neural connectivity in brain networks related to attention. Despite these findings, there are no treatments that target attentional deficits in PTSD. Therefore, a treatment that targets attentional control may improve PTSD symptoms. Mindfulness is a practice ofattending to the present moment in a nonjudgmental manner. Mindfulness therapies have been shown to be effective in reducing anxiety and depression in other psychiatric and physically ill populations, but have not been studied in PTSD. Mindfulness training has been shown to alter behavioral measures of attention in healthy individuals, however, it is unknown how mindfulness would affect attention in disordered populations. The present study is a randomized control trial of a mindfulness based group therapy for PTSD and healthy individuals. Preliminary analyses were performed on subjects before undergoing mindfulness training. Compared to healthy individuals, PTSD subjects showed deficits in attention on the Attention Network Test (a type of continuous performance task). PTSD symptom severity was moderately correlated with attention. Finally, better attention and fewer PTSD symptoms were related to greater bilateral amygdala connectivity at rest. These results suggest that PTSD may alter neural networks related to attention. Future research will examine the effects of mindfulness training on attention in PTSD