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The Effects of PTSD-Related Memory Loss

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) is a condition that can result from experiencing severe trauma. Called an "anxiety disorder" by the National Center for PTSD, the syndrome is the result of witnessing or being involved in a horrifyingly frightening event such that you feel that your life or the life of those around you are in danger. Often, the person in the situation feels that he has absolutely no control over the situation and thus can do nothing to affect the outcome.

  1. Physical Changes

    • Once thought to be purely a mental disorder, studies have shown that there are physical changes that take place in the brain of someone suffering from PTSD, especially as it concerns memory. In a presentation to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco in 2008, physicist Norbert Schuff directly correlated PTSD with a substantial reduction in the size of the hippocampus, the area of the brain that processes memory. This occurs particularly in combat-related PTSD, including those who have suffered severe abuse.

    PTSD-Generated Amnesia

    • More rarely, neurochemical changes can affect how your memory works after a precipitating event that results in PTSD. When a traumatic event occurs, physical changes in the hippocampus can leave you without the ability to form new informational connections and store new data in your memory. Changes in the amygdala, the center in the brain that deals with emotional memory, can generate a lack of fear/startle response which can be communicated to the hippocampus as faulty memory. Severe brain injury at the time of the precipitating event has been known to cause memory loss due to damaged nerves.

    Aphasia

    • PTSD-related memory loss isn't necessarily just the inability to remember events. Sufferers of PTSD can develop aphasia, which is an inability to understand words that are spoken to you and an inability to find the right word to express yourself and your ideas. This is a very frustrating condition, as you know what it is you want to say, but your brain just won't cooperate. People with aphasia will substitute words or concepts for the word that they want, i.e., I went to the giraffe today and bought a new blue. You know you want to say, "I went to the store today and bought a new hat," but it just won't come out that way. Aphasia results from direct injury to the brain.

    Abuse in Childhood

    • Abuse incurred as a child can leave you with fragmented or missing memories of the events before or after the abuse. Chronic abuse can result in being unable to access memories before a certain age. Fragmented memory is more than emotional avoidance of the abuse situation; it results from atrophy of the hippocampus. PTSD in children can drastically affect how they learn and process new information for the rest of their lives.

    Emotions

    • The prefrontal cortex is that part of the brain that mediates emotional response to stimuli. The prefrontal cortex joins with the amygdala, which governs how short-term memory gets converted into long-term memory. The amygdala also provides the association between a strong emotional reaction and how that reaction gets stored in long-term memory. When the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala dysfunction, the checks and balances in terms of memory association can be thrown off. In other words, you can have either off-the-charts emotional reactions to events or no reaction at all. It is the emotional "memory" of an event that allows it to be recorded into long-term memory.

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