Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can occur in the wake of exposure to a traumatic event. Currently, PTSD symptoms are assessed mainly through self-report in the form of questionnaire or clinical interview. Self-report has inherent limitations, particularly in psychiatric populations who may have limited awareness of deficit, reduced attention span, or poor vocabulary and/or literacy skills. Diagnosis and evaluation of treatment efficacy would be aided by behavioral measures. A viable alternative may be virtual environments, in which the participant guides an on-screen “avatar” through a series of onscreen events meant to simulate real-world situations. Here, a sample of 82 veterans, self-assessed for PTSD symptoms was administered such a task, in which the avatar was confronted with situations that might evoke avoidant behavior, a core feature of PTSD. Results showed a strong correlation between PTSD symptom burden and task performance; in fact, the ability to predict PTSD symptom burden based on simple demographic variables (age, sex, combat exposure) was significantly improved by adding task score as a predictor variable. The results therefore suggest that virtual environments may provide a new way to assess PTSD symptoms, while avoiding at least some of the limitations associated with symptom self-report, and thus might be a useful complement to questionnaire or clinical interview, potentially facilitating both diagnosis and evaluation of treatment efficacy.

Despite a large amount of research on depression and abuse, there is still a controversy on how abuse is measured and on childhood trauma’s effect on the physiological function of adults. Here, we attempt to clarify the relationship between different types of abuse and depression while focusing on childhood abuse. This article, unlike prior research, provides an overview that addresses physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and their psychological impact on the victims. Results show that abuse is a vulnerability factor for a variety of mental and physical health problems and that psychological abuse is strongly associated with depression. More research is needed to understand (a) the role of abuse in the development and maintenance of depression and, in particular, longitudinal studies that also account for the large number of risk and protective factors that influence this relationship and (b) how different types of abuse can influence response to treatment among survivors with depression, in order to provide effective trauma-focused approaches to manage depressive symptoms.

Recent work has found that personality factors that confer vulnerability to addiction can also affect learning and economic decision making. One personality trait which has been implicated in vulnerability to addiction is intolerance to uncertainty (IU), i.e., a preference for familiar over unknown (possibly better) options. In animals, the motivation to obtain drugs is often assessed through conditioned place preference (CPP), which compares preference for contexts where drug reward was previously received. It is an open question whether participants with high IU also show heightened preference for previously rewarded contexts. To address this question, we developed a novel computer-based CPP task for humans in which participants guide an avatar through a paradigm in which one room contains frequent reward (i.e., rich) and one contains less frequent reward (i.e., poor). Following exposure to both contexts, subjects are assessed for preference to enter the previously rich and previously poor room. Individuals with low IU showed little bias to enter the previously rich room first, and instead entered both rooms at about the same rate which may indicate a foraging behavior. By contrast, those with high IU showed a strong bias to enter the previously rich room first. This suggests an increased tendency to chase reward in the intolerant group, consistent with previously observed behavior in opioid-addicted individuals. Thus, the personality factor of high IU may produce a pre-existing cognitive bias that provides a mechanism to promote decision-making processes that increase vulnerability to addiction.