By Robert Saners, Image: Linda Chao/UCSF, Berkeley News, January 7, 2022
A recent study links anxiety behavior in rats, as well as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in military veterans, to increased myelin — a substance that expedites communication between neurons — in areas of the brain associated with emotions and memory.
The results, reported by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and UC San Francisco (UCSF), provide a possible explanation for why some people are resilient and others vulnerable to traumatic stress, and for the varied symptoms — avoidance behavior, anxiety and fear, for example — triggered by the memory of such stress.
If, as the researchers suspect, extreme trauma causes the increased myelination, the findings could lead to treatments — drugs or behavioral interventions — that prevent or reverse the myelin production and lessen the aftereffects of extreme trauma.
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