The Fear of Trauma

When an individual suffers from trauma, the symptoms tend to be anxiety, flashbacks of bad events or in other words fear. Fear is the hardest symptom that any trauma patient can try to surpass. It leaves the human mind in a distress call that can lead to other mental issues. Kerry Ressler, an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is trying to study what trauma sufferers go threw mentally, and if there is cure to ease the distress. Kessler believes that a Brain Derived Neurological Factor (BDNF) causes trauma victims to keep on recalling the event that shocked them. On one of his experiments Ressler had two rats that did not have this factor and he discovered that they could not remember to fear the trauma inflicted on them, which in there experiment was minor foot shocks. Ressler believes that if there is someway to remove this factor from the human mind then recovering from traumatic event would be a lot simpler. Ressler also knows that the cause of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) comes from the BDNF which is a chemical from the prefrontal cortex that is secreted on the part of the mind that recalls the memory it solidifies not allowing it to be forgotten. Ressler hopes that a drug will prevent the chemical from secreting or will remove it from the spot it rests on.

This directly relates to biology because to better understand what causes PTSD a scientist must have a strong background to the biology of the mind. A scientist must know the biology of the mind to comprehend the problem with trauma and why it is so difficult to cure. A scientist must know why the brain sends out chemicals, how to stop it from secreting these chemicals, and how to prevent the victim from future PTSD. These are all information gained from a background about biology and without knowledge of the biological functions of the mind a scientist could not understand why this happens and a cure to the problem.

This problem showed be addressed and solved as quickly as possible because over five million victims suffer from this distress and rends them helpless and afraid to do many things that are key to surviving in this world. Scientist like Kessler and his colleagues are taking a huge task to solving it because this problem is very complex since it has to do with the mind which is the most difficult thing to apprehend. Trauma victims know what fear can do to the mind because they live with it on a daily basis and with so many in America a cure to this will be just as helpful as a cure for cancer.

Link:

http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=117428&org=NSF