Event-related potentials and EMDR treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder

Neurobiology of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

“…For example, during OR and EMDR perception of painful stimuli is decreased, which is frequently linked to parasympathetic dearousal effect (Hekmat et al, 1994;Armstrong & Vaughan, 1996). These findings are in agreement with results obtained by analysis of event-related potentials in PTSD patients undergoing EMDR treatment, which have shown post-session attenuation of P3a component representing a correlate of OR related to automatic orientation of attention towards a source of stimulation (Lamprecht et al, 2004). Several lines of evidence also shows that these attentional alterations may be neuro-chemically based on decreased noradrenergic activity mediated by inhibitory effects on the locus coeruleus, which also emerges during rapid eye movements REM sleep dream activity (Kuiken et al, 2002;Missonier et al, 1999).…”

Treating Combat-Related Stress Disorders: A Multiple Case Study Utilizing Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) With Battlefield Casualties From the Iraqi War

“…At the end of each set, the client is asked to report what comes to awareness at the moment. This process appears to elicit the associations necessary to rapidly reorganize and assimilate the dysfunctional memory (see Shapiro, 2001;Stickgold, 2002; see also Andrade, Kavanagh, & Baddeley, 1997;Barrowcliff, Gray, Freeman, & MacCulloch, 2004;Christman, Garvey, Propper, & Phaneuf, 2003;Kuiken, Bears, Miall, & Smith, 2001-2002Lamprecht et al, 2004;Van den Hout, Muris, Salemink, & Kindt, 2001).…”

EEG correlates of the severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms: A systematic review of the dimensional PTSD literature

“…Likewise, another study that investigated never-treated, comorbid-free PTSD patients following the Tokyo subway sarin attack reported a negative correlation between P300 and avoidance/numbing (Araki et al, 2005). However, some oddball studies did not find significant correlations between P300 and PTSS (Kimble et al, 2010;Lamprecht et al, 2004;Neylan et al, 2003;Veltmeyer et al, 2005), which demonstrates the conflicting findings regarding the relationship between PTSS and P300 obtained using this paradigm.…”

“…Other auditory tasks, such as the auditory oddball task, though numerous, have yielded a number of dimensionally negative data regarding ERPs and PTSS severity (Ge et al, 2011;Holstein et al, 2010;Kimble et al, 2010;Lamprecht et al, 2004;Neylan et al, 2003;Veltmeyer et al, 2005). Among the auditory oddball studies, the exception was a current source analysis of the P300 component that observed a significant inverse correlation between PTSS and the P300 current source density in the posterior cingulate gyrus (Bae et al, 2011).…”