A psychophysiological study of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam veterans

Abstract

Comparisons were made between a group of male Vietnam veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (n = 11) and an age and sex matched group of non-veteran controls (n = 11) on their psychophysiological responding (heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), forehead EMG, skin resistance level, and peripheral temperature) to mental arithmetic and an audiotape of combat sounds played at gradually increasing volume levels. The two groups responded differently to the combat sounds in terms of HR, systolic BP, and forehead EMG. The HR response could correctly classify 95.5% of the combined sample. Implications of these findings for the basis of PTSD are discussed.

Neuroendocrine and Psychophysiologic Responses in PTSD: A Symptom Provocation Study

“…PTSD patients were more distressed than both control groups, by both combat sounds and white noise, supporting the notion of hyper-responsivity to meaningful and ambiguous cues. In agreement with earlier studies (Blanchard et al 1991a;Pitman and Orr 1993), skin conduction and heart rate responses to combat sounds were significantly larger in PTSD, supporting the notion of autonomic hyper-reactivity to trauma-related stimuli and demonstrating that excessive SC and HR responses can be elicited by a "generic" auditory activation paradigm as well as by individualized imagery scripts. SC was a more sensitive index of arousal, responding to both traumatic and nonspecific auditory stimulation; whereas, HR was more specifically responsive to combat sounds.…”

“…Among psychophysiological measures, enhanced heart rate (HR) responses have been found consistently reported (Blanchard et al 1982;McFall et al 1990;Pallmeyer et al 1986;); whereas, enhanced skin conductance (SC) and electromyogram (EMG) responses have been mainly reported during internally generated mental imagery Pitman et al 1987). This response heterogeneity is not surprising, because the SC response reflects primarily sympathetic tone, the HR response is governed by both sympathetic and parasympathetic activity, and facial EMG response reflects primarily stimulus appraisal, or valence, but not arousal (Bradley et al 1996).…”

“…Tonic secretion has been elevated in some studies (Kosten et al 1987); whereas, baseline measures were found normal in others (Murburg et al 1994b). Blanchard (Blanchard et al 1991a) reported enhanced plasma norepinephrine (NE) responses to traumatic stimuli; whereas, others (McFall et al 1990;Murburg et al 1994a) found enhanced epinephrine (Epi), but not norepinephrine, reponses. Although technical aspects of sample collection (arterialized vs. nonarterialized) and norepinephrine metabolism (Murburg 1994) could account for some discrepancies, stress studies in normals report good correspondence between epinephrine and norepinephrine responses (Richter et al 1996), which is yet to be demonstrated in PTSD.…”

Psychophysiological reactivity to traumatic and abandonment scripts in borderline personality and posttraumatic stress disorders: a preliminary report

“…A number of studies (Pitman et al, 1987(Pitman et al, , 1990Blanchard et al, 1982;McFall et al, 1990;Orr et al, 1993;Shin et al, 1999) have investigated psychophysiological reactivity to trauma-related scripts in patients with PTSD. In contrast to the present study, most former studies found more pronounced heart rate responses in PTSD.…”

“…We were not able to replicate the findings of larger heart rate responses to traumatic reminders in patients with PTSD. Heart rate differences in response to trauma-related imagery were found in combat-related PTSD in male veterans (Pitman et al, 1987(Pitman et al, , 1990Blanchard et al, 1982;McFall et al, 1990;Orr et al, 1993) and abuse-related PTSD in female patients (Shin et al, 1999;Carson et al, 2000;Orr et al, 1998).…”