Post-traumatic stress disorder is usually framed as a psychological wound, but a growing body of evidence suggests it can also speed up how quickly the brain itself appears to age. Instead of simply changing mood or memory, PTSD seems to leave a biological ...

Veterans who smoke marijuana to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder may be onto something. There's growing evidence that pot can affect brain circuits involved in PTSD. Experiments in animals show that tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical that gives ...

When the siren sounds, people do not pause to analyze the situation. Parents grab their children, soldiers move toward protective cover, and civilians instinctively calculate the fastest path to safety. In those moments the brain’s alarm system activates almost instantly, triggering the fight-or-flight response designed to protect human life.

For researcher Lynnette Averill, the quest to find a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is deeply personal. Averill's father served as an enlisted infantryman with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam and struggled to cope with his war ...

For military veterans, many of the deepest wounds of war are invisible: Traumatic brain injuries resulting from head trauma or blast explosions are a leading cause of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicide among veterans.

Experiencing a traumatic event often results in an acute stress response and the lingering memory may lead to mental and physical changes that negatively impact one's health. This is often diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Previous ...

For example, while NAA level alone may not be a specific way to diagnose PTSD, because it is common in other conditions, NAA level over time may be a way to gauge the progress of care, as could measuring changes in brain volume for conditions where treatment returns the brain to a more normal state.