DOES STRESS DAMAGE THE BRAIN?: Understanding Trauma-Related Disorders from a Neurological Perspective

The answer to the title is yes, according to Bremner, the director of Emory University's Center for Positron Emission Tomography, an associate professor of psychiatry and radiology at Emory's school of medicine and the editor of two textbooks on trauma. In this general introduction to the psychology of post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, Bremner's central thesis is that various discrete diagnoses for trauma-related illnesses can be unified: "patients exposed to different types of trauma have more in common than they have differences." Bremner sees the damage of trauma as being inflicted chiefly to the hippocampus, the part of the brain that stores memory, and his book is most articulate on this subject. His lab work on dissociation in Vietnam veterans and studies of sexually abused women are grimly cogent. The tone is relaxed and avuncular, to the point where the book sometimes meanders, as when Bremner gives the history of radiation or a discourse on gun-control laws. There is also the occasional sentence that may flummox the lay reader: "Stress results in an inhibition of neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus... an effect mediated by the NMDA receptor...." Too specialized for a general audience, yet not well-organized enough for specialists, this book may not get the audience demanded by some of its insights. (Sept. 15)