Does PTSD Cause Learning Disabilities?
August 9th, 2012
Psychological problems can create cognitive impairments such as memory loss, disorganized thinking, and confusion. These conditions are usually temporary and a direct result of symptoms related to issues such as depression, bipolar, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or anxiety, among others. But emerging research suggests that posttraumatic stress (PTSD) can also affect specific areas of the brain, in particular, the hippocampus and the surrounding medial temporal lobes (MTLs). Although some research has looked at cognitive functioning in relation to PTSD, few studies have focused specifically on learning tasks that tax the hippocampus and MTLs. To address this gap in the literature, Einat Levy-Gigi from the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey recently conducted a study that assessed how well individuals with PTSD performed on learning tasks compared to individuals without PTSD.
For the study, Levy-Gigi enlisted five different samples of participants with and without trauma exposure and with and without PTSD. The participants were analyzed based on learning experiments drawn from the Acquired Equivalence Task to determine if PTSD affected their cognitive performance. Levy-Gigi found that the participants with PTSD and those without were all able to complete the training phase of the task, but those with PTSD performed more poorly on the actual learning test when compared to those without PTSD. This finding held true regardless of ethnicity, as the participants were gathered from various cultural backgrounds. Additionally, the type of trauma exposure, which varied among participants, did not affect cognitive performance.
The results of this study support other research that suggests that PTSD may influence not only the symptoms of other mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, or stress, but also learning. Levy-Gigi believes that these findings shed light on a broader range of impairments related to PTSD that may be physiological in origin. Because the participants in this study varied in regard to symptom presence and trauma exposure, the results demonstrate that the way in which people learn to cope with traumatic events, and not just the presence of PTSD symptoms, can influence future cognitive abilities. Levy-Gigi added, “Future work is needed to test the possibility that performance on the Acquired Equivalence Task can predict which individuals may benefit most from cognitive–behavioral treatment.”
Reference:
Levy-Gigi, E., Kéri, S., Myers, C. E., Lencovsky, Z., Sharvit-Benbaji, H., Orr, S. P., et al. (2012). Individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder show a selective deficit in generalization of associative learning. Neuropsychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0029361
Related articles:
Common Therapy Approaches to Help You Heal from Trauma
Art and Trauma: Creativity as a Resiliency Factor
© Copyright 2012 by www.GoodTherapy.org Portland Bureau - All Rights Reserved. 
-
Find the Right Therapist
-
12 Comments | Click here to leave a comment.
Comments
“the way in which people learn to cope with traumatic events, and not just the presence of PTSD symptoms, can influence future cognitive abilities.”
This has to be the deal-breaker in my opinion.So many people have problems.Why,everybody does!But the way we take them in our stride,the way we cope with them and our general attitude towards a problem are what dictate how much it actually affects us!
Having been an optimistic person all my life,I am surprised at how easily people lose the plot due to a problem that I would label as something not too big.It all depends on how we take it!
Since most learning diabilities are more often diagnosed in younger people, I am not sure that all of them would have all had something traumatic happen to them in life that would have resulted in PTSD?
I get it that after you are an adult and have experienced an event like this that it could definitely have a profound influence over how you absorb and take in information and process that information. It could leave you feeling numb to evevrything around you, so that when you are trying to learn a new skil or piece of information this could be made more difficult for you resulting from PTSD. But in children I guess I am not sure that this would always be applicable.
Not beyond the realm of possibility
I know that when I am experiencing even the smallest bit of stress it can have a definite drawback to how I can focus, or not in most cases, and cause me to dwell only on the small things eating away at me
I have never been in a state of PTSD but I would imagine that it would take the things that I commonly feel and multiply that exponentially making it even harder to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
here’s my theory:
even short term depression can make us incapable of learning things because our mind is so preoccupied with what’s causing the depression.this has happened to me.
and so,something like ptsd would definitely have a longer effect on our learning skills and abilities!
There is a time when this could become very critical especially as more veterans from recent wars begin to try to re-enter everyday society and the workplace.
More and more of the will have the opportunity to further their educations so that they will then be more marketable and employable in an increasingly advanced work market.
To do this many of them will take advantage of the military programs which will allow them to go back to school and pursue a degree in a field that could really serve to benefit from later on.
But if these are soldiers struggling with PTSD from their time in the military, and they are now headed to the classroom, wouldn’t you say that if indeed PTSD can lead to certain learning diabilities, these men and women could face quite a challenge when it comes to pursuing their education?
I guess that I so closely associate learning disabilities with children who are school aged that I never gave any thought to how they could impact an adult too. That could really hurt in today’s economy!
I know that when I came home from Vietnam I was innundated with bad dreams and stress that I never knew was going to come on untile it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I could barely remember how to tie my shoes some days, much leass tackle challenging subjects that learning diabilities could affect.
As I watched a brother struggle with PTSD, I realized very quickly that after the experiences that he had that brought this on, he was never the same person. Not only did his happiness completely fade, but he also became almost catatonic. Not catatonic in the true sense I suppose, but he was never happy again. And he would never seek help, which I am sure what led to his early and untimely death. he couldn’t get past it on his own but was too proud to ask for help from someone else.
You are correct in your assumption that individuals’ success in coping with trauma varies widely. It’s a different situation – immature, ignorant, and potentially harmful – to assume you have a complete awareness of anyone’s struggles dealing with trauma. Because people like you rush to judgement without any knowledge, education, or empathy, people like me – someone who survived father/daughter incest most weekends from age 3-12 with a knife held to my throat – could be devastated by such offhand, thoughtless remarks.
I’m just asking you not to judge till you’ve walked a mile in my shoes. And I’d be happy to do the same for you.
Clarification: my comment was in reply to the one left by Ashley.
I learned I have learning disabilities related to severe anxiety and complex PTSD from childhood. I have done much introspection and realized much of learning issues came from my father constantly telling me how much of a know-it-all or how stupid I was. My father dropped out of high when he was 16 to help on his family’s dairy cattle farm after his father died. He finally told me a few months before his death that he said I was a know-it-all because all people my age were know-it-alls. He would not teach me how to do things on the farm because he did not want me to learn.
The things I learned are: (1) Some illnesses have a source in a family member and/or person with a illness, (2) teachers would accuse me of not trying in school when I was trying but had a disability, (3) learning problems can affect someone at work, (4) my learning disability is misunderstood or people want to make judgements instead of trying to understand.
Learning to understand this ability has given me more empathy to other’s plight and has helped me grow as a person.
Has there been any treatments or any way to help patients with learning disabilities due to ptsd?
Leave a Reply
By commenting you acknowledge acceptance of GoodTherapy.org's Terms and Conditions of Use.