Psychophysiology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Mechanisms, Diagnostics, Neurorehabilitation

Abstract

Background. Up to 30% of combatants are diagnosed with combat syndrome (post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD), and 15% of veterans show symptoms even 10 years after the end of the war. Not only during hostilities, but also in peacetime, about 60% of people at different periods of their lives encounter traumatic events that can provoke a disorder that, in its totality of symptoms, resembles “combat syndrome”. Objective. PTSD is a multimodal disorder, the diagnosis and treatment of which requires an interdisciplinary approach. The article is devoted to a brief review of methods of psychophysiological (instrumental) diagnosis and neurorehabilitation of PTSD. Results. The key areas of psychophysiological research into the mechanisms of PTSD formation are highlighted. A review of the achievements and prospects of clinical psychophysiology in the development of instrumental methods for the diagnosis and neurorehabilitation of PTSD is presented. Conclusions. Methods of psychophysiology in combination with methods of psycho- and pharmacotherapy increase the effectiveness of treatment of PTSD and are indispensable in situations where patients do not trust the methods of conventional medicine or show insensitivity to traditional therapy. The most promising directions in the development of methods for instrumental diagnosis and correction of PTSD are the development of neurofeedback techniques and adaptive neural interfaces, TES and TMS methods, and the study of the contribution of genetic and epigenetic factors to the etiology of PTSD.

Keywords

• combat syndrome
• post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd)
• electroencephalogram (eeg)
• amygdala
• hypothalamic-adrenal system
• galvanic skin response (gsr)
• infrared thermography
• neurofeedback
• reconsolidation
• psychopharmacotherapy