Effects of Traumatic Stress on Brain Structure and Function: Relevance to Early Responses to Trauma

The events of 9/11 and the widening impact of psychological trauma today have raised a higher level of awareness about the potentially deleterious effects of psychological trauma on the individual. One area of interest after 9/11 was the early trauma response and the most effective way to deal with the window of time immediately after traumatization in order to prevent long term psychopathology. Understanding the neurobiology of the acute trauma response may be useful in designing prevention and treatment strategies. Studies in animals and humans have shown that biological stress response systems, including norepinephrine and cortisol, are affected in both the acute and chronic stages of the trauma response. Brain areas involved in memory, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, may be areas of intervention to ameliorate the early trauma response. Due to the difficulty of performing research in this time period, most research to date has been in patients with chronic disorders such as chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Only a few treatment studies have been performed in the early trauma period, and more research in this area is needed.