Student's research may lead to relief for traumatized veterans

Middlebury, Vt — As senior psychology major Libby Marks leads her research subjects into the interview room, the task seems simple compared with the complexity of the data she is about to collect. They fill out some paperwork, then Marks fits them with an electroencephalography (EEG) cap, which is connected to electrodes that measure brain wave activity. She shows them to a comfortable armchair then leaves to observe the experiment from another room.

Now seated and wired, the subjects watch a computer screen which shows them a sequence of 64 short sentences. The words flash on the screen one at a time and when the final word of each sentence appears, the subject clicks a button marked either “yes” or “no” to indicate whether the sentence makes sense.

The people who have volunteered to participate in the experiment have all experienced serious psychological trauma of some kind. Many have served in combat and saw friends killed by incoming rounds in base camp or by roadside bombs. Some, though not all, report symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - a potentially debilitating condition that can follow an experience of extreme terror, such as war, assault, rape or a terrible car accident.

Marks, who has been working as a senior thesis student for Assistant Professor of Psychology Matthew Kimble says her senior thesis work in the lab has made her understand the urgent need for more information about PTSD. “We need more studies that lend legitimacy to the disorder,” says Marks. “I hope our findings will point people in the right direction for further study that will give PTSD the recognition it deserves.”

One of the greatest barriers to effective diagnosis and treatment, especially among veterans, is the notion that PTSD is a sign of weakness or that complaints won’t be taken seriously.

“The thing I think is valuable about this study,” says Kimble, “is that it may provide empirical physiological evidence that’s consistent with what the veterans have been telling us.” He says this type of information is urgently needed in a field like PTSD that is surrounded with doubt and controversy. “If you can show the neurophysiological correlates of the complaints that these men and women are reporting, then I think you’re making headway into establishing the type of sympathy that is required for people to recover.”

Marks, Kimble and another student, senior Yanik Bababekov, are exploring whether there are differences between the brain activity of a PTSD sufferer and a normally functioning person. They are looking at a specific part of the brain wave that deals with expectancy - or how your brain fills in the blanks when you hear a spoken sentence.

Theory suggests that people with PTSD symptoms, who commonly suffer from things like hypervigilance or inability to concentrate, would have different neurological responses, which they may not even realize, to the sentences than a normally-functioning person and that this difference would show in their brain waves.

Back in the lab with her subject ready to go, Marks begins the experiment. Each sentence in the sequence will be in one of three categories: expected, unexpected or trauma-related.

For example, they might begin with a sentence that makes perfect sense:

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