Veterans with PTSD can use mindfulness training to manage memories caused by war, according to a new study conducted with functional MR by researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School and VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Dr. Anthony King, a University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry researcher who led the new study in collaboration with VA psychologists, and his team, studied 23 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with PTSD, and discovered how the veterans’ brains changed in ways that may help them find their own “off switch” to those war memories.

“We were particularly interested in how brain regions come on and offline as people perform different activities. More specifically, we wanted to see if mindfulness training was affecting the resting stage brain activity,” King told HCB News.
Mindfulness training, a mind-body technique that focuses on in-the-moment attention and awareness, was administered with four month of weekly sessions, to 14 of the veterans, while the remaining nine, the control group, received a VA-developed intervention that included problem solving and group support, but not mindfulness or exposure therapy.

The veterans’ brains were scanned using fMRI, which visualizes brain activity as different parts of the brain communicate with each other through networks of brain cells.

Before mindfulness training, when the veterans were resting quietly, their brains had extra activity in regions that responded to threats or other outside problems. Meanwhile, the “default mode” of the brain involved in focused thinking and when the mind is wandering was not active. This is a sign of hypervigilance often seen in PTSD individuals, according to the study.

At the end of the four month study, fMRI showed that the default mode was more active and showed increased connections to areas of the brain that involve volitional attentional shifting, when a person can purposely think or act upon something, and the area that involved inner, sometimes meandering, thoughts.

There was a decrease in scores on a standard scale of PTSD diversity in the mindfulness group, which suggest improvements in PTSD symptoms, whereas the control group did not exhibit this.

Those with the greatest easing of symptoms had the largest increases in connections.

King emphasizes that mindfulness should not be the only solution for their symptoms, but they should also seek out trained providers who specialize in PTSD care, since mindfulness sessions can sometimes actually trigger intrusive thoughts.

“There are some really excellent treatments, such as trauma processing. But there are challenges to this. I think mindfulness training and self-compassion training could be incorporated into successful treatment for PTSD,” said King.

“Once we explained the rationale behind mindfulness, which aims to ground and calm a person while also addressing mental phenomena, [the veterans] were very interested and engaged - more than we expected,” he added.

King said that the small size of the patient group means that the results are just the start to exploring more of this issue.

At least 20 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have PTSD and/or depression, according to the RAND Corporation Center for Military Health Policy Research, and approximately half would not seek treatment.

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