Neurobiological Trajectories of Psychological Trauma—Implications for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Dear Colleagues,

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is classified as a trauma- and stress-related disorder with distinctive symptoms following a psychologically distressing event outside the range of usual human experience. The development of acute and posttraumatic stress symptoms after a traumatic event is common and often leads to personal distress and functional impairment in trauma victims. Inadequate, excessive or prolonged stress reactions may exceed the organism’s natural adjustive capacity and permanently affect adaptive responses. Traumatic stress exposure may alter neuroendocrine responses to stress, triggering a health-related risk cascade with persistent structural and functional neuropsychobiological changes and mediate cumulative health risk leading to increased physical and mental morbidity and all-cause mortality in later life. Traumatic stress thus affects master homeostatic regulating systems at the crossroads of peripheral and central susceptibility pathways, such as the stress system and brain circuitry, and consequently circadian, immune, neuroendocrine, autonomic, metabolic and emotional (re)activity. The diverse human genetic background and the later engraved epigenetic modifications through stress-related gene expression could additionally interact with these alterations and explain inter-individual variation in vulnerability or resilience to trauma. Accordingly, many studies have reported a negative association of PTSD and traumatic stress with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, chronic inflammatory and pain syndromes, frequency of medical consultations as well as with the number of medical diagnoses.

This Special Issue aims to highlight and review recent advances from human and animal research on the most acknowledged neurobiological allostatic trajectories exerting the enduring adverse effects of traumatic stress and PTSD in later life with special emphasis on identifying factors that explain individual variation in vulnerability or resilience. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: HPA-axis, autonomic nervous system, genetics/epigenetics, novel biomarkers, neuroimmunology, neurocircuitry/imaging and neuroendocrinology.

Understanding the pathways susceptible to disruption following traumatic stress exposure and the effects of a dysregulated interconnection between all systems involved in PTSD could provide new insights into the pathophysiological trajectories linking traumatic stress to systems’ maladjustment and human disease.

Dr. Agorastos Agorastos
Guest Editor
Dr. Nikolaos P. Daskalakis
Dr. Panagiota Pervanidou
Co-Guest Editors

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