The comparison of stimulus-driven attention and attention bias among trauma survivors with PTSD, trauma survivors with no PTSD and non-trauma-exposed control participants

Background and Aim : We hypothesize that the trauma-exposed people without PTSD, have more attention deficits than PTSD patients. These cognitive impairments may have led to their reaction to the traumatic event.Methods : First, we want to assess arousal and bottom-up attention during their responding to neutral, emotional (positive and negative), and traumatic stimuli by using event-related potentials (ERPs); and compare their results with PTSD patients. Besides, the results should be analysis among people without any traumatic experience to compare each group with our control group. We hypothesize that the trauma-exposed participants have more attention and memory deficits than PTSD patients, and this impairment might help them to suppress the traumatic event. Second, attention bias in PTSD has investigated in many articles. Most of which reported facilitation bias or avoidance bias (two opposite points) for traumatized people. In the second part of this research, we want to discriminate the attention bias in our three groups of participants by traumatized and non-traumatized stimuli. The hypothesis is that the PTSD patients have a facilitation bias; on the other hand, the traumatized people without PTSD, avoid the traumatic stimuli. Both of these attention biases -avoidance or facilitation- are related to top-down attention mechanism, and at the final stage of our research, we can compare the top-down and bottom-up attention among PTSD, traumatized, and non-traumatized people.Results : In conclusion, we assume that patients with PTSD have different bottom-up attentional mechanisms than traumatized individuals without current PTSD. Our next assumption is that the facilitation bias is more in PTSD patients, and avoidance bias has more prevalence among non-PTSD traumatized people. It could be related to people coping strategies against traumatic memories.Conclusion : People exposed to trauma who do not develop long-term post-traumatic stress disorder, might have various strategies to suppress or cope with their traumatic memory. If we can prove that the amounts of attention deficits might help non-PTSD trauma-exposed people, it might be changed some of the PTSD therapeutic viewpoints (such as trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy) and more concentrated on bottom-up strategies instead of top-down ones.

Keywords:

Memory , Attention , Attention Bias , Emotional Memory , PTSD , Traumatic Memory