Brain reactivity to unpleasant stimuli is associated with severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms

Despite the impressive progress in the biological research of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), little is known about the neurobiological correlates of emotional reactions in healthy people with posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). The present study investigated whether PTSS are related to the electrocortical processing of unpleasant pictures in a sample of undergraduate students. Participants were instructed to judge whether images were unpleasant or neutral while an EEG was taken. The late positive potential (LPP) to unpleasant relative to neutral was more positive for people with high PTSS than with low PTSS. Additionally, a temporospatial principal components analysis (PCA) for the whole sample identified positivities that were directly correlated with PTSS. These results provide evidence that brain reactivity to unpleasant cues would predict PTSS intensity and thus be a biomarker of PTSS severity.