Rest may help reduce PTSD symptoms

A period of rest following a traumatic event can reduce the subsequent development of involuntary 'memory intrusions'*, one of the hallmark symptoms in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new UCL study has found. The study, published in Scientific Reports and funded by the European Research Council and Wellcome, suggests memory disturbances in PTSD may be ameliorated by increased 'consolidation' (a process by which memories are stored and contextualised), which could shed new light on treatment and prevention. Lead author Dr Lone Hørlyck (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) said: "Over a lifetime, many people experience traumatic events but most people do not develop persistent trauma symptoms. "Identifying which mechanisms might contribute to memory intrusions in PTSD is important, as these disturbances comprise an important maintaining factor in the disorder." For the study, researchers presented 85 participants with emotionally negative videos, followed by either a period of wakeful rest or a simple control task - where participants were required to pay attention to numbers on a screen. The videos comprised highly emotional content, such as badly injured people or serious accidents. The study found that participants who had a period of rest following the viewing of negative videos reported fewer memory intrusions related to the videos over the following week. In contrast, there was no difference between rest and the simple control task on a memory test, assessing how much participants remembered when they wanted to.