Brain Scans Show Evidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

A few months ago I read an article in the New York Times about the controversy surrounding Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in veterans and whether or not honoring them with a purple heart was appropriate. Ultimately, the pentagon has decided not to award veterans because it is not considered a physical wound, and a PTSD diagnosis can be subjective. The article can be found here.

However, I found this article on the Science Daily website suggests we may be on our way to giving a more concrete diagnosis of PTSD. The experiment targeted soldiers who have been diagnosed with PTSD compared to soldiers who have not been. When scanning their brains with an MRI subjects were asked to perform memory tasks while viewing photos that were meant to distract them. The photos were of combat situations or simply random. The PTSD and the non-affected both showed distraction during the combat photos, however, PTSD patients were also likely to become distracted by the photos not related to combat. In addition, the PSTD patient's pre-frontal cortex (related to the sense of self)  showed much more activity to combat photos than soldiers who did not have PTSD.

The experimenter concluded that patients with PTSD are likely to have emotional responses triggered not only by memories of combat, but seemingly unrelated things as well. Experiments like this may give us more concrete diagnosis of PTSD in the future, and perhaps will make the pentagon reconsider honoring PTSD patients with a purple heart if there is solid physical evidence. According to the article diagnosing PTSD with brain scans is still in its infancy, but it also makes me wonder if we can start to apply and design experiments for other psychological disorders and begin to make more reliable diagnoses based on being able to see an abnormality rather than having it be largely up to evaluation and interpretation.