A cognitive neuroscience account of posttraumatic stress disorder and its treatment.

Recent research in the areas of animal conditioning, the neural systems underlying emotion and memory, and the effect of fear on these systems is reviewed. This evidence points to an important distinction between hippocampally-dependent and non-hippocampally-dependent forms of memory that are differentially affected by extreme stress. The cognitive science perspective is related to a recent model of posttraumatic stress disorder, dual representation theory, that also posits separate memory systems underlying vivid reexperiencing versus ordinary autobiographical memories of trauma. This view is compared with other accounts in the literature of traumatic memory processes in PTSD, and the contrasting implications for therapy are discussed.

[1]  Joseph E LeDoux.  The emotional brain , 1996 .

[2]  M. Gazzaniga.  The new cognitive neurosciences, 2nd ed. , 2000 .

[3]  A Ehlers,et al.  Posttraumatic stress disorder following political imprisonment: the role of mental defeat, alienation, and perceived permanent change. , 2000, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[4]  P. Vuilleumier,et al.  Functional neuroanatomical correlates of hysterical sensorimotor loss. , 2001, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[5]  M. Bouton.  Context, Ambiguity, and Classical Conditioning , 1994 .

[6]  David B. Pillemer,et al.  Momentous Events, Vivid Memories , 2000 .

[7]  J. Riskind.  Looming vulnerability to threat: a cognitive paradigm for anxiety. , 1997, Behaviour research and therapy.

[8]  W. Stiles,et al.  ASSIMILATION OF PROBLEMATIC EXPERIENCES BY CLIENTS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY , 1990 .

[9]  A. Ehlers,et al.  Dissociation and post-traumatic stress disorder: two prospective studies of road traffic accident survivors. , 2002, The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science.

[10]  B. A. van der Kolk,et al.  Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: overview and exploratory study. , 1995, Journal of traumatic stress.

[11]  John Brown,et al.  Recall and Recognition , 1976 .

[12]  C. Brewin,et al.  Effects of Mode of Writing on Emotional Narratives , 1999, Journal of traumatic stress.

[13]  P. Resick.  Stress and Trauma , 2001 .

[14]  S. Rachman.  The return of fear: Review and prospect , 1989 .

[15]  M. Koss,et al.  Are rape memories different? A comparison of rape, other unpleasant, and pleasant memories among employed women , 1995, Journal of traumatic stress.

[16]  R. Janoff-Bulman.  Shattered Assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma , 1992 .

[17]  W. Estes,et al.  Processes of memory loss, recovery, and distortion. , 1997, Psychological review.

[18]  C MacLeod,et al.  Memory accessibility and probability judgments: an experimental evaluation of the availability heuristic. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  Jean S. Gearon,et al.  Treating the Trauma of Rape , 2001 .

[20]  E. Foa,et al.  Change in rape narratives during exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder , 1995, Journal of traumatic stress.

[21]  C. Brewin,et al.  Meta-analysis of risk factors for posttraumatic stress disorder in trauma-exposed adults. , 2000, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[22]  Andrew R. A. Conway,et al.  Working memory and retrieval: a resource-dependent inhibition model. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[23]  C. Brewin,et al.  A comparison of flashbacks and ordinary autobiographical memories of trauma: cognitive resources and behavioural observations. , 2002, Behaviour research and therapy.

[24]  C. Brewin.  Cognitive change processes in psychotherapy. , 1989, Psychological review.

[25]  L. Jarrard,et al.  Pavlovian conditioning and extinction of context cues and punctate CSs in rats with ibotenate lesions of the hippocampus , 1999, Psychobiology.

[26]  C. Brewin,et al.  Recovered memories of trauma: phenomenology and cognitive mechanisms. , 1998, Clinical psychology review.

[27]  M. Horowitz.  Stress response syndromes , 1976 .

[28]  M. Kozak,et al.  Emotional processing of fear: exposure to corrective information. , 1986, Psychological bulletin.

[29]  Judith Lewis Herman,et al.  Trauma and Recovery , 2015 .

[30]  Hollyn M. Johnson,et al.  Processes of successful intentional forgetting. , 1994 .

[31]  R. Bjork.  Retrieval inhibition as an adaptive mechanism in human memory. , 1989 .

[32]  Elizabeth M. Smith,et al.  Psychiatric disorders among survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing. , 1999, JAMA.

[33]  E. Foa,et al.  Psychosocial treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder: a critical review. , 1997, Annual review of psychology.

[34]  E. Holmes,et al.  PERITRAUMATIC EMOTIONAL “HOT SPOTS” IN MEMORY , 2001, Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy.

[35]  C. Brewin,et al.  Acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder in victims of violent crime. , 1999, The American journal of psychiatry.

[36]  E. Tulving,et al.  Toward a theory of episodic memory: the frontal lobes and autonoetic consciousness. , 1997, Psychological bulletin.

[37]  C. Brewin,et al.  Intrusive memories in depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. , 1999, Behaviour research and therapy.

[38]  C. Brewin,et al.  Intrusive cognitions, coping strategies and emotional responses in depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and a non-clinical population. , 1998, Behaviour research and therapy.

[39]  W J Jacobs,et al.  Stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias. , 1985, Psychological review.

[40]  M. Conway,et al.  The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system. , 2000, Psychological review.

[41]  J. G. Carlson,et al.  A cognitive action theory of post-traumatic stress disorder , 1988 .

[42]  M. Gazzaniga,et al.  The new cognitive neurosciences , 2000 .

[43]  Joseph E LeDoux,et al.  How the Brain Processes Emotional Information , 1997, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[44]  Mark E. Bouton,et al.  Sources of relapse after extinction in Pavlovian and instrumental learning , 1991 .

[45]  A. Ehlers,et al.  Psychological predictors of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder after motor vehicle accidents. , 1998, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[46]  P. W. Frey,et al.  Inhibition and learning , 1973 .

[47]  B. Frueh,et al.  Does EMDR work? And if so, why?: a critical review of controlled outcome and dismantling research. , 1999, Journal of anxiety disorders.

[48]  H Eichenbaum,et al.  Declarative memory: insights from cognitive neurobiology. , 1997, Annual review of psychology.

[49]  L. Squire.  Declarative and Nondeclarative Memory: Multiple Brain Systems Supporting Learning and Memory , 1992, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[50]  Diane Armstrong,et al.  Trauma and Memory , 1998 .

[51]  M Moscovitch,et al.  Recovered consciousness: a hypothesis concerning modularity and episodic memory. , 1995, Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology.

[52]  Michael C. Anderson,et al.  On the status of inhibitory mechanisms in cognition: memory retrieval as a model case. , 1995, Psychological review.

[53]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  Emotion and MEM. , 1992 .

[54]  E. Tulving,et al.  Memory Systems 1994 , 1994 .

[55]  L. Nadel,et al.  Memory consolidation, retrograde amnesia and the hippocampal complex , 1997, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[56]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View , 1988 .

[57]  Richard F. Thompson,et al.  Locus coeruleus lesions and resistance to extinction of a classically conditioned response: Involvement of the neocortex and hippocampus , 1982, Brain Research.

[58]  E Tulving,et al.  Priming and human memory systems. , 1990, Science.

[59]  P. Burgess,et al.  Reaction to trauma: a cognitive processing model. , 1992, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[60]  Michael McCloskey,et al.  Catastrophic Interference in Connectionist Networks: The Sequential Learning Problem , 1989 .

[61]  Steven Taylor,et al.  Comparative efficacy of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: a meta-analysis , 1998 .

[62]  C. Classen,et al.  Predictors of posttraumatic stress symptoms among survivors of the Oakland/Berkeley, Calif., firestorm. , 1994, The American journal of psychiatry.

[63]  A. Harvey,et al.  A qualitative investigation of the organization of traumatic memories. , 1999, The British journal of clinical psychology.

[64]  C. Brewin,et al.  Fear, Helplessness, and Horror in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Investigating DSM-IV Criterion A2 in Victims of Violent Crime , 2000, Journal of traumatic stress.

[65]  S. Southwick,et al.  Functional neuroanatomical correlates of the effects of stress on memory , 1995, Journal of traumatic stress.

[66]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. , 1995, Psychological review.

[67]  Debra A. Fleischman,et al.  Double Dissociation Between Memory Systems Underlying Explicit and Implicit Memory in the Human Brain , 1995 .

[68]  D. Clark,et al.  A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. , 2000, Behaviour research and therapy.

[69]  B. Rothbaum,et al.  Behavioral/cognitive conceptualizations of post-traumatic stress disorder , 1989 .

[70]  Larry L. Jacoby,et al.  Depth of processing, recognition and recall. , 1976 .

[71]  L. Squire,et al.  Retrograde amnesia and memory consolidation: a neurobiological perspective , 1995, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[72]  R. Kesner.  Neural mediation of memory for time: Role of the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex , 1998 .

[73]  T. Borkovec,et al.  Worry: Thought suppression of emotional processing. , 1993 .

[74]  S. Rachman,et al.  Emotional processing. , 1980, Behaviour research and therapy.

[75]  John P. Aggleton,et al.  The amygdala: Neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory, and mental dysfunction. , 1992 .

[76]  R. Horselenberg,et al.  Traumatic intrusions as 'worse case scenario's'. , 1998, Behaviour research and therapy.

[77]  Pavlovian conditioning and tolerance to analgesia produced by electrical stimulation in the brainstem , 1983 .

[78]  A. Hackmann.  6.14 – Working with Images in Clinical Psychology , 1998 .

[79]  G. Davey.  Trauma Revaluation, Conditioning, and Anxiety Disorders , 1993, Behaviour Change.

[80]  F. Craik,et al.  Levels of Processing in Human Memory , 1979 .

[81]  Joseph E LeDoux,et al.  Different projections of the central amygdaloid nucleus mediate autonomic and behavioral correlates of conditioned fear , 1988, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[82]  E. Higgins,et al.  Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. , 1996 .

[83]  Roderick Hunt,et al.  The Enigma of Organization and Distinctiveness , 1993 .

[84]  J. Metcalfe,et al.  Emotional memory: The effects of stress on "cool" and "hot" memory systems. , 1998 .

[85]  T. Dalgleish,et al.  A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. , 1996, Psychological review.

[86]  B. Litz,et al.  Information processing in anxiety disorders: Application to the understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder , 1989 .

[87]  R. Hunt,et al.  Accessing the particular from the general: The power of distinctiveness in the context of organization , 1996, Memory & cognition.

[88]  L. Canetti,et al.  Predictors of PTSD in injured trauma survivors: a prospective study. , 1996, The American journal of psychiatry.