Neurobiology of emotional trauma.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review synthesizing mechanistic, neurobiological, and neuroimaging literature without systematic methodology.
PubMed 32840220 · doi:10.22365/jpsych.2020.312.162
What was done
This narrative review synthesizes published literature on the neurobiological consequences of emotional trauma and early abuse. It summarizes evidence regarding structural brain alterations, functional neuroimaging during traumatic recall, neurocircuitry dysfunction in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and neuroimaging correlates of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy.
What was found
The abstract provides a qualitative summary of published findings and reports no numerical metrics, sample sizes, or effect estimates. Reported findings include: exposure to repeated emotional stressors associates with dendritic growth in the basolateral amygdala and dendritic retraction in the hippocampus; traumatic event recall activates the limbic system, right amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, anterior insula, and temporal cortex; PTSD neuroimaging consistently shows hypoactivity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and thalamus, with an inverse correlation between dorsolateral prefrontal and amygdala activation; cited meta-analytic work notes global brain volume reductions distinguishing PTSD from major depression; and successful EMDR therapy is linked to increased frontal lobe activation.
Why it matters
The review outlines how emotional trauma disrupts frontolimbic brain networks, providing a mechanistic framework for understanding affect dysregulation and cognitive-emotional symptoms across trauma-related disorders.
Limits
The paper is a narrative review with no systematic search methodology, quality assessment, or quantitative pooling. The abstract lacks empirical numbers, sample sizes, patient characteristics, or effect estimates.
Cited by
- supports Severe psychological trauma causes physiological changes to subsequent brain function.