Memory and attention in combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Uddo, Madeline; Vasterling, Jennifer J.; Brailey, Kevin; Sutker, Patricia B.

doi:10.1007/bf00964322

Cited by 220 publications

(158 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…In two studies that tested a four-domain model of attention (Mirsky, Anthony, Duncan, Ahearn, & Kellam, 1991), Gulf War and Vietnam Veterans with PTSD performed worse than warzone-exposed Veterans without PTSD on sustained attention and encoding tasks, but not on focus-execute or a shifting task (Vasterling et al, 1998;. These findings are representative of other studies with war Veterans in which PTSD was associated with deficits on encoding (e.g., Gurvits, Lasko, Schacter, Kuhne, Orr, & Pitman, 1993;Uddo, Vasterling, Brailey, & Sutker, 1993;Barrett, Green, Morris, Giles, & Croft, 1996;Vasterling, Brailey, Constans, Borges, & Sutker, 1997;Beckham, Crawford, & Feldman, 1998;Gilbertson et al, 2001), but not set-shifting (Gurvits et al, 1993;Sullivan, Krengel, Proctor, Devine, Heeren, & White, 2003) or focus-execute tasks (Litz et al, 1996). Findings regarding sustained attention have been mixed, with studies finding PTSD-related deficits in Veterans (Semple et al, 1996) and civilians (e.g., McFarlane, Weber, & Clark, 1993) while other studies of Veterans found no relation (Sullivan et al, 2003;Vasterling et al, 2000).…”

Section: Attention and Executive Functioningsupporting

confidence: 56%

Neuropsychological Sequelae of PTSD and TBI Following War Deployment among OEF/OIF Veterans

et al. 2012

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Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) are highly prevalent among Veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. These conditions are associated with common and unique neuropsychological and neuroanatomical changes. This review synthesizes neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies for both of these disorders and studies examining their co-occurrence. Recommendations for future research, including utilizing combined neuropsychological and advanced neuroimaging techniques to study these disorders alone and in concert, are presented. It is clear from the dearth of literature that more attention in the literature should be given to examining temporal relationships between PTSD and mTBI, risk and resilience factors associated with both disorders and their co-occurrence, and mTBI-specific factors such as time since injury and severity of injury, utilizing comprehensive, yet targeted cognitive tasks.

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Section: Attention and Executive Functioningsupporting

confidence: 56%

Neuropsychological Sequelae of PTSD and TBI Following War Deployment among OEF/OIF Veterans

et al. 2012

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“…An examination of the positive studies demonstrating significant differences in attention, learning, and memory show a range of effect sizes for PTSD status on neurocognitive functioning from 0.7 to 2.0 (Bremner et al, 1993;Bremner, Randall, Scott, Capelli, et al, 1995;Gil, Calev, Greenberg, Kugelmass, & Lerer, 1990;Gilbertson, Gurvits, Lasko, Orr, & Pitman, 2001;Jenkins, Langlais, Delis, & Cohen, 1998;Moradi, Doost, Taghavi, Yule, & Dalgleish, 1999;Roca & Freeman, 2001;Sachinvala et al, 2000;Uddo, Vasterling, Brailey, & Sutker, 1993;Vasterling et al, 2002;Vasterling, Brailey, Constans, & Sutker, 1998;Yehuda et al, 1995). Our study was not sufficiently powered to detect small effect sizes for cognitive performance; however, we did have adequate power to find effects similar in magnitude to most of those reported in the literature.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention, learning, and memory in posttraumatic stress disorder

Neylan

Lenoci

Rothlind

et al. 2004

Journal of Traumatic Stress

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This study compared attention and declarative memory in a sample of combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD, n = 24) previously reported to have reduced concentrations of the hippocampal neuronal marker N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), but similar hippocampal volume compared to veteran normal comparison participants (n = 23). Healthy, well-educated males with combatrelated PTSD without current depression or recent alcohol/drug abuse did not perform differently on tests of attention, learning, and memory compared to normal comparison participants. Further, hippocampal volume, NAA, or NAA/Creatine ratios did not significantly correlate with any of the cognitive measures when adjustments for multiple comparisons were made. In this study, reduced hippocampal NAA did not appear to be associated with impaired declarative memory. Keywordsposttraumatic stress disorder; memory; hippocampus; alcoholism; N-acetyl aspartate Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often describe difficulties with concentration, attention, and memory. Poorer performance on tests of attention, declarative memory, and other cognitive domains attributable to PTSD status have been found in many but not all studies (e.g. Crowell, Kieffer, Siders, & Vanderploeg, 2002). Decreased performance on neurocognitive tasks may be of particular relevance to PTSD because multiple studies have documented decreases in hippocampal volume (Bremner et al., 1997;Bremner, Randall, Scott, Bronen, et al., 1995;Gilbertson et al., 2002;Gurvits et al., 1996;Stein, Koverola, Hanna, Torchia, & McClarty, 1997;Villarreal et al., 2002) and decreased reduced concentrations of the neuronal marker N-acetyl aspartate (NAA; Freeman, Cardwell, Karson, & Komoroski, 1998;Schuff et al., 2001). Hippocampal atrophy in PTSD was associated with decreased function in explicit memory in a sample of combat veterans (Bremner, Randall, Scott, Bronen, et al., 1995), though not in women with history of childhood sexual assault (Stein et al., 1997).

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“…T he study of neuroanatomical correlates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has primarily focused on mesial temporal regions, largely the hippocampus, due to the known effects of long term stress on memory performance (Bremner et al 1995b;Bremner et al 1993;Pitman 1989;Sutker et al 1991;Uddo et al 1993;Villarreal and King 2001;Yehuda et al 1995) and the association of high levels of glucocorticoids and neuron loss in the hippocampus (McEwen and Magarinos 1997;Sapolsky et al 1990;Uno et al 1989). Several studies have found smaller volumes of the left or right hippocampus in male combat veterans with PTSD (Bremner et al 1995a;Gurvits et al 1996), adult survivors of childhood abuse with PTSD , and adult women with a history of severe sexual abuse (Stein et al 1997).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%