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December 13, 2022 · 11:16 pm

Researchers reveal how trauma changes the brain

Exposure to trauma can be life-changing – and researchers are learning more about how traumatic events may physically change our brains. But these changes are not happening because of physical injury, rather our brain appears to rewire itself after these experiences. Understanding the mechanisms involved in these changes and how the brain learns about an environment and predicts threats and safety is a focus of the ZVR Lab at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, which is led by assistant professor Benjamin Suarez- Jimenez, Ph.D.

“We are learning more about how people exposed to trauma learn to distinguish between what is safe and what is not. Their brain is giving us insight into what might be going awry in specific mechanisms that are impacted by trauma exposure, especially when emotion is involved,” said Suarez-Jimenez, who began this work as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Yuval Neria, Ph.D., professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

Their research, recently published in Communications Biology, identified changes in the salience network – a mechanism in the brain used for learning and survival – in people exposed to trauma (with and without psychopathologies, including PTSD, depression, and anxiety). Using fMRI, the researchers recorded activity in the brains of participants as they looked at different-sized circles – only one size was associated with a small shock (or threat). Along with the changes in the salience network, researchers found another difference – this one within the trauma-exposed resilient group. They found the brains of people exposed to trauma without psychopathologies were compensating for changes in their brain processes by engaging the executive control network – one of the dominate networks of the brain.

“Knowing what to look for in the brain when someone is exposed to trauma could significantly advance treatments,” said Suarez-Jimenez, a co-first author with Xi Zhu, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurobiology at Columbia, of this paper. “In this case, we know where a change is happening in the brain and how some people can work around that change. It is a marker of resilience.”

Adding the element of emotion

The possibility of threat can change how someone exposed to trauma reacts – researchers found this is the case in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as described in a recent study in Depression & Anxiety. Suarez-Jimenez, his fellow co-authors, and senior author Neria found patients with PTSD can complete the same task as someone without exposure to trauma when no emotion is involved. However, when emotion invoked by a threat was added to a similar task, those with PTSD had more difficulty distinguishing between the differences.

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What About Seniors Falling?

Falling down is a serious problem for senior citizens. For seniors, 65 years and older, one out of three falls each year. Half of these fall more than once. Seniors fall more often with each decade of life. Women are more likely to fall than men, but men are more likely to sustain a fatal fall injury. These statistics refer to individuals living in the community, not nursing homes.

So says, Adnan Arseven, MD, AGSF, Division of Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, speaking before the hospital’s Healthy Transitions Program®.

Dr. Arseven defined falling as “coming to rest inadvertently on the ground or at a lower level.” This is not as a result of loss of consciousness or hazardous conditions, like slipping on ice.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, said, “Among older adults (those 65 or older), falls are the leading cause of injury death. They are also the most common cause of nonfatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma.

“In 2010, 2.3 million nonfatal fall injuries among older adults were treated in emergency departments and more than 662,000 of these patients were hospitalized.

“In 2010, the direct medical costs of falls, adjusted for inflation, was $30.0 billion.”

What outcomes are linked to falls?

• Twenty to thirty percent of people who fall suffer moderate to severe injuries such as lacerations, hip fractures, or head traumas. These injuries can make it hard to get around or live independently, and increase the risk of early death.
• Falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries (TBI). In 2000, TBI accounted for 46 percent of fatal falls among older adults.
• Most fractures among older adults are caused by falls. The most common are fractures of the spine, hip, forearm, leg, ankle, pelvis, upper arm and hand.
• Many people who fall, even if they are not injured, develop a fear of falling. This fear may cause them to limit their activities, which leads to reduced mobility and loss of physical fitness, and in turn increases their actual risk of falling.
• The death rates from falls among older men and women have risen sharply over the past decade.
• In 2009, about 20,400 older adults died from unintentional fall injuries.
• Men are more likely than women to die from a fall. After taking age into account, the fall death rate in 2009 was 34 percent higher for men than for women.
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