P3a amplitude to trauma-related stimuli reduced after successful trauma-focused PTSD treatment.

An elevated P3a amplitude to trauma-related stimuli is strongly associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), yet little is known about whether this response to trauma-related stimuli is affected by treatment that decreases PTSD symptoms. As an analysis of secondary outcome measures from a randomized controlled trial, we investigated the latency and amplitude changes of the P3a in responses in a three-condition oddball visual task that included trauma-related (combat scenes) and trauma-unrelated (threatening animals) distractors. Fifty-five U.S. veterans diagnosed with combat-related PTSD were randomized to receive either active or sham repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). All received cognitive processing therapy, CPT+A, which requires a written account of the index trauma. They were tested before and 6 months after protocol completion. P3a amplitude and response time decreases were driven largely by the changes in the responses to the trauma-related stimuli, and this decrease correlated to the decrease in PTSD symptoms. The amplitude changes were greater in those who received rTMS + CPT than in those who received sham rTMS + CPT, suggesting that rTMS plays beneficial role in reducing arousal and threat bias, which may allow for more effective engagement in trauma-focused PTSD treatment.

Informations de copyright

Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.