Cueing natural event boundaries improves memory in people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often report difficulty remembering information in their everyday lives. Recent findings suggest that such difficulties may be due to PTSD-related deficits in parsing ongoing activity into discrete events, a process called event segmentation. Here, we investigated the causal relationship between event segmentation and memory by cueing event boundaries and evaluating its effect on subsequent memory in people with PTSD.

PTSD is associated with impaired event processing and memory for everyday events.

Current theories of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) propose that memory abnormalities are central to the development and persistence of symptoms. While the most notable memory disturbances in PTSD involve memory for the trauma itself, individuals often have trouble remembering aspects of everyday life. Further, people with PTSD may have difficulty segmenting ongoing activity into discrete units, which is important for our perception and later memory of the activity.

Semantic knowledge attenuates age-related differences in event segmentation and episodic memory.

While semantic and episodic memory may be distinct memory systems, their interdependence is substantial. For instance, decades of work have shown that semantic knowledge facilitates episodic memory. Here, we aim to clarify this interactive relationship by determining whether semantic knowledge facilitates the acquisition of new episodic memories, in part, by influencing an encoding mechanism, event segmentation.

Depression and Cognitive Dysfunction in Older U.S. Military Veterans: Moderating Effects of BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism and Physical Exercise.

Objective: Depression is associated with increased risk for cognitive dysfunction, yet little is known about genetic and behavioral factors that may moderate this association. Using data from a nationally representative sample of older U.S.

BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and posttraumatic stress symptoms in U.S. military veterans: Protective effect of physical exercise.

The Met allele of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) Val66Met polymorphism is associated with reduced levels of BDNF release, heightened hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis reactivity, and impaired fear extinction. As a result, Met allele carriers may be at risk for greater severity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. In this study, we examined the relationship between the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and PTSD symptoms in two nationally representative samples of European American U.

Retrospective Appraisals Mediate the Effects of Combat Experiences on PTS and Depression Symptoms in U.S. Army Medics.

A life-threatening traumatic experience can cause physical and psychological distress, but it can also be remembered with pride from having demonstrated one's courage and abilities under severe circumstances. Characteristics of the event, early response, as well as later personal reflection, together determine the individual's response to a traumatic event. We investigated how traumatic combat experiences and retrospective appraisals of those experiences affected reports of symptoms of posttraumatic stress and depression in 324 U.

Gender differences in combat medic mental health services utilization, barriers, and stigma.

Military health care providers experience considerable stressors related to their exposure to death and traumatic injuries in others. This study used survey data from 799 active duty U.S.

Training, deployment preparation, and combat experiences of deployed health care personnel: key findings from deployed U.S. Army combat medics assigned to line units.

Objective: To describe the perceptions of training and deployment preparation and combat experiences and exposures of U.S. Army combat medics.