PTSD as a memory disorder

Psychiatry as clinical neuroscience: Adopting a cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychiatric disorders is crucial in attaining a deeper understanding of disease pathophysiology and symptomatology and developing novel theory-driven treatments.Worldwide, a great number of neuroscientists study basic brain functions like attention, fear, reward, and affect.The clinical disturbance of these brain functions is in part what we call psychiatry.Yet, most clinicians have very little knowledge of this literature, and intervention research in psychiatry is rarely guided by findings from fundamental neuroscience.In this presentation, I make the claim that post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be considered a disorder of basic memory function.Hence, a more mechanistic account of PTSD symptoms, like flashbacks and hypervigilance, can be derived from fundamental insights into, for instance, the relationship between stress and memory and memory (re)consolidation.Furthermore, these findings (should) guide us in the development of novel treatments for PTSD. PSYCHOTRAUMATOLOGY