Like an endlessly repeating video loop, horrible memories and thoughts can play over and over in the minds of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They intrude at the quietest moments, and don’t seem to have an off switch.
Now, a small new study of veterans with PTSD shows the promise of mindfulness training for enhancing the ability to manage those thoughts if they come up, and to keep them from getting “stuck.” Even more surprising, the findings actually show the veterans’ brains changed—in ways that may help them find their own off switch for that endless loop.
For the study, published in the journal Depression and Anxiety, 23 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan received some form of group therapy. After four months of weekly sessions, many reported that their PTSD symptoms eased up.
But in those who participated in mindfulness training—a mind-body technique that focuses on in-the-moment attention and awareness—researchers were surprised to see significant brain changes as well.
Stronger Brain Connections
The changes showed up on functional MRI, or fMRI, brain scans that can visualize brain activity as different areas of the brain “talk” to one another through networks of connections between brain cells.
Before the mindfulness training, when the veterans were resting quietly, their brains had extra activity in regions involved in responding to threats or other outside problems. This is a sign of that endless loop of hypervigilance often seen in PTSD.
But after learning mindfulness, they developed stronger connections between two other brain networks: the one involved in our inner, sometimes meandering, thoughts, and the one involved in shifting and directing attention.
“The brain findings suggest that mindfulness training may have helped the veterans develop more capacity to shift their attention and get themselves out of being ’stuck' in painful cycles of thoughts,” says Anthony King of the psychiatry department at the University of Michigan.
