Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common mental health problem that leads to great suffering as well as significant costs to the people afflicted with this disorder and to society. PTSD is a chronic and disabling problem that develops after a trauma. People with PTSD suffer from problems controlling several types of emotion, including fear, anxiety, anger, and depression. The risk of developing PTSD is higher in the U.S. military than in the general U.S. population with about 19% of people in military suffering from this problem during their lifetime. By employing a team of experts in a wide range of areas of study, this research aims to improve treatments for veterans and people in the military with PTSD resulting from combat.

The research team will investigate a new idea that individuals suffering from combat-related PTSD can be trained to control activity in brain regions that are involved in emotion. This increased ability to control emotion-related brain areas will reduce PTSD symptoms. Researchers also will use novel research techniques termed real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf) and electroencephalography (EEG), which will allow them to analyze brain activity as it occurs. And then they will able to show people information about activity in the brain as it happens, which helps them learn to control it.

The goal is to transform this novel research and technique into a treatment that can be easily deployed and will improve the treatment of combat-related PTSD and the mental health of our veterans and people in the military both in the short- and long-term. This research would provide both mental healthcare providers and scientists with new insights into how the brain is involved in combat-related PTSD.

LIBR Investigators receive a four–year R01 collaborative grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study interrelationships between inflammatory transcripts, genes and positive valence system function in anhedonia. Jerzy Bodurka, Ph.D., Program Director for the grant will lead the team of scientists from LIBR, the University of Tulsa, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. The goal of the proposed research is to assess gene transcription from white blood cells, imaging measures of brain function and behavioral assessments of reward responsiveness along a dimension of anhedonic mood symptoms. Researchers will attempt to prove that inflammation plays a major role in the onset and perpetuation of the reduction in pleasure and motivation that many individuals experience in the clinical conditions that currently are subsumed under the diagnostic categories of depression, other mood disorders or chronic fatigue. The team hopes to identify an abnormal pattern of gene transcription and brain function that will be sufficiently distinct from the normal pattern that it can be used to objectively establish a diagnosis based on biology, as opposed to self-reported symptoms, and that this diagnostic category will predict the likelihood that an individual with this disorder will benefit from particular types of treatment.