OBJECTIVE: Emotion regulation and cognitive executive control are significantly impaired in both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). These illnesses are increasingly common in veterans and their co-occurrence may exacerbate symptoms and recovery. The current study sought to investigate neural correlates of these impairments via event-related potentials (ERPs) and examined the association of PTSD symptom severity and impulsivity with these correlates.
METHODS: Electroencephalographic data from seventy-nine veterans with PTSD and TBI and 17 control participants were recorded during a visual emotional oddball task and analyzed for the N2 and P3b ERPs.
RESULTS: Results revealed that veterans showed a reduced P3b ERP in response to both target images and standard images. However, for standard images that followed a negative emotional distractor, the veterans showed a heightened N2 amplitude while the controls did not. In addition, impulsivity predicted modulation of the P3b across stimulus conditions, with a greater P3b amplitude associated with an increase in impulsivity.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that veterans showed hyper-responsivity to background information and reduced ERPs to task-relevant information. SIGNIFICANCE: These findings may reflect heightened internal states that create neural noise and a reduced ability to modulate relevant responses.