Trauma is a widespread experience that can leave lasting marks on mental health, but not everyone who goes through a traumatic event develops a disorder like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Recent research is shedding light on why some people are more vulnerable than others—and the answer may lie in how the brain regulates emotions after trauma. The research was made by Annika C. Konrad, Andrei C. Miu, Sebastian Trautmann and Philipp Kanske.
A new review published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience by Konrad and colleagues highlights the critical role of emotion regulation—our ability to manage and control emotional responses—in the aftermath of trauma. The researchers note that while only a minority of trauma survivors develop full-blown mental health disorders, difficulties in emotion regulation are a common thread among those who do.
According to the study, explicit emotion regulation—strategies we consciously use, like reappraising a situation or suppressing feelings—has received less attention in neuroscience than automatic, unconscious regulation. Yet, these conscious strategies are especially important for therapeutic interventions. Studies show that maladaptive strategies, such as suppressing emotions or ruminating on negative events, are linked to higher PTSD symptoms, while more adaptive strategies like reappraisal are not as strongly associated with psychopathology.
Brain imaging studies reveal that trauma survivors, particularly those with PTSD, often have reduced activity in key prefrontal brain regions when trying to regulate negative emotions. These areas are crucial for cognitive control and conflict monitoring, suggesting that trauma may impair the brain’s ability to exert top-down control over emotions. Intriguingly, some PTSD patients show increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, hinting that they may be working harder to regulate their emotions but are less effective at it1.
Despite these insights, the review points out significant gaps in the research. Few studies have comprehensively examined how different emotion regulation strategies are represented in the brains of trauma survivors, and even fewer have compared those with and without PTSD. This limits our understanding of how trauma specifically disrupts emotional control and what makes some people more resilient.
The article also highlights promising findings from intervention studies. Therapies that focus on trauma, such as exposure therapy, and newer approaches like neurofeedback, have shown potential for restoring healthy emotion regulation by promoting neural plasticity—the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize itself.
In summary, trauma can disrupt the brain’s emotional control systems, increasing the risk for mental health disorders. Understanding the neural mechanisms behind these disruptions offers hope for developing more targeted and effective treatments for trauma survivors.
