Neural basis of PTSD

Anxiety is a conditioned emotional response. First it focuses attention, and then it clamps the brain into rigidity by obsessively replaying past traumas [link].

Coming of age in a combat zone is bound to leave a deep impact on the tissues of the mind. I know that early experience with driving, while exposed to roadside bombs, can lead to phobias for city and highway driving. Witnessing the devastation of a mortar attack on a remote Afghan village can make a walk in the park seem like a high-risk venture and experiencing the impact of bombs detonating in town square can make it hard to sit still at Denny’s. Hearing someone say, “you’ll get over it” is not going to sound all that convincing. Why ..? I have a theory. We already know that the networks of the mind continue developing well into a person’s twenties. In fact most neural-development takes place outside the womb where it can be guided by culture and experience. I believe when combat is someone’s introduction to the ‘ways of the world’, it profoundly affects development that prepares them for adulthood. Depending on a soldier’s degree of resilience going in, the experience can produce a conditioned anxiety so pervasive; it becomes debilitating. It’s not uncommon for veterans to feel suspicious when neighbors knock .. panic in public places. Or they may find themselves taking different routes to work everyday ..sleeping less than five hours a night and barricading themselves indoors all weekend. Early combat experience becomes neurologically ‘cemented’ in the naive soldier’s mind creating a generalized fear that, at any point, at any time, someone’s going to take their life.