Stony Brook researcher gets $2.2 million grant to explore how PTSD memories are built

For decades, scientists have suspected that symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder like flashbacks and intrusive thoughts may be tied to changes in the structure and function of the brain.

Some estimates put the number of American adults who suffer from PTSD in a year at over a million. Soon, research by a Stony Brook University neuroscientist may deepen our understanding of the condition at a cellular and even molecular level, in time perhaps yielding new diagnostic tools and therapies.

Under a $2.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Prerana Shrestha, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the university’s Renaissance School of Medicine, will study how protein synthesis in higher-order cognitive areas of the brain leads to long-lasting emotional memories.

In an interview, Shrestha likened the neuronal ribosomes that build those proteins to machines that can be controlled.

“When strong emotional memories are formed, we have a wave of proteins being made, and if we can tweak that machine to make more or less proteins, we can increase the strength of memories, or decrease the strength,” she said.

That capability is crucial because people with PTSD live with memories that can be nightmarishly real or, in clinical terms, “so robust they are difficult to extinguish” Shrestha said.
When those memories are cued — by an event, a sight or a sound — the protein flood recurs. That process, which occurs over a few hours or less, yields what she called a “window of plasticity” during which an emotional memory updates and reconsolidates, and there is an opportunity for intervention.

Intervention could be pharmacological or by brain electrode stimulation. Shrestha’s lab works with mice, so any human trials are probably years away.

Rebecca Schwartz, a Northwell Health psychologist who researches the intersection between trauma exposure and mental health outcomes and who is not involved in Shrestha’s research, said current treatments for PTSD are powerful but lengthy and arduous. The prolonged exposure technique, for instance, may involve up to 15 90-minute sessions intended to promote emotional processing of trauma through trauma-related stimuli.

“This is not always something a lot of people want to engage in,” she said.

Exploring what Schwartz called the “neurobiological underpinnings” of memory consolidation, or the formation of stable, long-lasting memories could yield powerful therapeutic benefits, she said, perhaps enhancing existing treatments or even — if administered in the hours immediately following traumatic exposure — heading off PTSD before it sets in by disrupting the consolidation of a person’s memories of the event.