PTSD can develop even without memory of trauma

Scientists have found that even with no explicit memory of an early childhood trauma, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can still develop in adulthood.
There are many forms of memory and only some of these may be critical for the development of PTSD, said researchers at the University at Albany and the University of California Los Angeles.
There are case reports of people who have experienced terrible life events that resulted in brain damage, some of whom developed syndromes similar to PTSD even though they had no recollection of the event itself, researchers said.
These reports suggest that explicit memory may not be an absolute requirement for PTSD, whereas other forms of learning, such as fear conditioning, may be required.

Explicit memory is the type of memory that can be voluntarily recalled from prior experience and articulated.
To test this hypothesis, Dr Andrew Poulos and his colleagues conducted a study designed to answer a basic question: If traumatic early life memories are lost, what persists of this experience?

In the laboratory, the researchers exposed juvenile rodents to a single session of unpredictable stress. Later, as adults, they tested the animals for their memory of the event and also measured their fear response.
"We found that our rodents, which failed to remember the environment in which they were traumatised, showed a persistent increase in anxiety related behaviour and increased learning of new fear situations," said Poulos.

"These heightened levels of fear and anxiety corresponded with drastic changes in the daily rhythms of the circulating hormone corticosterone," said Poulos.
Corticosterone is a hormone that, in part, regulates the body's stress response. Interestingly, within the amygdala, a brain region crucial for the learning of fear, levels of a receptor for corticosterone were also increased.
"Future experiments in our laboratory will allow us to determine if this increase in glucocorticoid receptors within the amygdala and/or aberrant hormone levels sets up the organism for increased fear and anxiety," Poulos said.
These findings indicate that not remembering a traumatic event does not preclude an organism from experiencing some of the negative consequences of trauma, such as anxiety and heightened fear, researchers said.

The study is published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.