Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Stress is useful to the body in short bursts; acute stress allows prey to evade predators and mild stress boosts learning. Stress becomes damaging when it disrupts normal biological cycles. Severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be explained as a condition where chronic reactivation of a stressful memory resets a necessary memory process before it is complete. Informed Simplifications is developing a biologically realistic neurocomputational model of PTSD that includes key aspects of memory, stress and sleep systems. Once we understand the underlying neurobiology of stress, sleep and memory, we can suggest significant improvements in behavioral and pharmaceutical treatment to release the brain from the PTSD cycle. Informed Simplifications was awarded an Small business Technology Transfer Research grant in 2006 by the NIMH to develop this computational model of PTSD to provide predictive tools for researchers and clinicians.