Baseline psychophysiological and cortisol reactivity as a predictor of PTSD treatment outcome in virtual reality exposure therapy.

ABSTRACT: Baseline cue-dependent physiological reactivity may serve as an objective measure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Additionally, prior animal model and psychological studies would suggest that subjects with greatest symptoms at baseline may have the greatest violation of expectancy to danger when undergoing exposure based psychotherapy; thus treatment approaches which enhanced the learning under these conditions would be optimal for those with maximal baseline cue-dependent reactivity. However methods to study this hypothesis objectively are lacking. Virtual reality (VR) methodologies have been successfully employed as an enhanced form of imaginal prolonged exposure therapy for the treatment of PTSD. Our goal was to examine the predictive nature of initial psychophysiologi

SUBMITTER: Norrholm SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5392238 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature