title: Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder show decreased cognitive control: evidence from dichotic listening.
abstract: The influence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on cognitive control and auditory attention modulation was examined with the use of a dichotic-listening (DL) task. The participants were 45 war-exposed refugees. The PTSD group comprised 22 participants meeting the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD, and the Control group comprised 23 war-exposed participants without PTSD. Both groups were tested with a consonant-vowel syllables DL task under three different attentional instructions. The two groups did not differ in the non-forced and forced-right conditions and showed, as expected, right-ear advantages. The Control group showed, as expected, a left-ear advantage in the forced-left (FL) condition. However, the PTSD group continued to show a right-ear advantage--and only minor modulation of the performance during the FL condition. This finding suggests that PTSD is associated with a reduced capacity for top-down attentional control of a bottom-up or stimulus-driven effect. The result shows that participants with PTSD have impaired cognitive control functions when tested on information processing of neutral stimuli.
authors.affiliation: National Centre for Emergency Primary Health Care, Uni Health, Bergen, Norway. grethe.johnsen@isf.uib.no
authors.forename: Grethe E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Johnsen
authors.forename: Pushpa
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kanagaratnam
authors.forename: Arve E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Asbjørnsen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology*; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D004007:Dichotic Listening Tests / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000150:complications*; D055815:Young Adult