Neural and Behavioral Correlates of PTSD and Alcohol Use

Hazardous use of alcohol negatively impacts the treatment of PTSD. However, the mechanisms that underlie the association between PTSD and hazardous alcohol use in veterans are poorly understood. The current research takes a multi-level approach to study the psychological, behavioral, cognitive and neural relationships between PTSD and alcohol use. Progress to date has been focused on building the infrastructure to conduct neural imaging by training of personnel, setting up recruitment of veteran populations, and conducting test runs to ensure the recently purchased fMRI equipment and experimental procedures were suitable to test the study hypotheses with veteran participants. The ability to now conduct functional brain imaging at the University of South Dakota represents the first and only opportunity in the State of South Dakota to perform such research, and complements the strong emphasis and infrastructure already in place to conduct psychological, behavioral and cognitive assessment of South Dakota s underserved rural veteran population. Preliminary data collected in the current reporting period suggests that emotional stimuli used in the fMRI tasks elicit arousal responses and expected neural activity in non-veteran and veteran participants, thus validating the paradigms for testing the behavioral and neural association between PTSD and hazardous alcohol use. Research in the next funding period will build on recruitment efforts to increase subject numbers, thus allowing full analysis of the psychological, behavioral, cognitive and neural data to identify behavioral and neural predictors of poor psychological outcomes related to PTSD and hazardous alcohol use in South Dakota veterans. Overall, the current funding has built research infrastructure and tools to allow comprehensive studies regarding mental health and neurological issues specific to veterans in rural areas.