How PTSD Affects The Brain

Your brain is equipped with an alarm system that helps ensure your survival. With PTSD, this system becomes overly sensitive and triggers easily. In turn, the parts of your brain responsible for thinking and memory stop functioning properly. When this occurs, it is hard to separate safe events happening now from dangerous events that happened in the past.

Your alarm system… Your amygdala triggers your natural alarm system. Your amygdala is part of the brain that’s wired to ensure survival. So when it’s overactive, it’s hard to think rationally.

Your brake system…
Your prefrontal cortex helps you think through decisions, observe how you’re thinking, and put the brakes on when you realize something you first feared isn’t actually a threat after all.

You’re prefrontal cortex helps regulate emotional responses triggered by the amygdala.

A bad combination: An overactive amygdala combined with an underactive prefrontal cortex create a perfect storm. It’s like stopping on your car’s accelerator, even when you don’t need to, only to discover that the brakes don’t work.

System recall errors…

Other common ptsd experiences – such as unwanted feelings that pop up out of nowhere or always being on the lookout for threats that could lead to more trauma – are related to the hippocampus, the memory center of your brain. Your hippocampus is a lot like your computer’s memory that writes files to its hard drive. After trauma your hippocampus works to remember the event accurately. But because a trauma is typically overwhelming, all the information doesn’t get coded correctly. This means that you might have trouble remembering specific details of the event.

Your amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus all contribute to the feelings and actions associated with fear, clear thinking, decision-making, and memory.

A bad combination: An overactive amygdala combined with an underactive prefrontal cortex create a perfect storm. It’s like stopping on your car’s accelerator, even when you don’t need to, only to discover that the brakes don’t work.

Your hippocampus is a lot like your computer’s memory that writes files to its hard drive. After trauma your hippocampus works to remember the event accurately. But because a trauma is typically overwhelming, all the information doesn’t get coded correctly. This means that you might have trouble remembering specific details of the event.