Meditation for Emotional Numbing in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Thirty otherwise medically healthy males between the ages of 25 and 55 who have previously met criteria for PTSD and have undergone prolonged exposure therapy (PET) yet continue to report emotional numbing symptoms as a chief complaint will be assessed for baseline levels of plasma oxytocin (OT), markers of pro-inflammatory cytokines, total mRNA expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), self-reported emotional numbing and social connectedness, and empathy. Real-world social connectedness will be assessed using an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) for two days, which will randomly record 50 second snippets of audio every 9 minutes and which will allow for quantification of time spent with others. Measures of empathy will include empathic accuracy during a dynamic empathic accuracy (EA) video task, which asks participants to rate what story-tellers are feeling while they tell positively and negatively valenced autobiographical stories. Because previous studies have shown that PTSD may interfere with subtle social processing skills and because one of the primary aims of this proposal is to uncover specific biomarkers related to self-reported emotional numbing, the investigators will also assess eye gaze and arousal covariance (correlation between skin conductance of video subject and that of study participant) during the EA task. Following baseline assessments, participants will participate in 8 weeks of CBCT, which entails twice-weekly meetings consisting of didactic information sessions and approximately 20 minutes of CBCT practice. Participants will be asked to practice at home for 20 minutes per day, and will be given a audio compact discs to guide at-home meditation. Upon completion of CBCT (Time 2), and again after 8-12 weeks (Time 3), all Time 1 assessments will be repeated.

Inclusion criteria

• previously met criteria for PTSD
• completed front-line treatment such as prolonged exposure therapy
• continue to report emotional numbing symptoms as a chief complaint

Exclusion criteria

(at the discretion of the researchers):

• Self-reported psychotic symptoms, current major depression, or suicidal ideation
• Self-reported active alcohol or drug abuse within the past six months
• Self-reported depression serious enough to require hospitalization, or that resulted in a suicide attempt, within the last year.
• Self-reported auto-immune disease such as lupus, crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome, or rheumatoid arthritis.
• Self-reported use of psychotropic medication, including antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics or chronic benzodiazepine therapy that has changed in the past 6 weeks.
• Self-reported use of any medication that might strongly affect your stress or immune systems, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, COX-2 inhibitors, corticosteroids, beta-blockers or statins.
• Claustrophobia
• Ferromagnetic implants contraindicated by functional MRI (fMRI) safety regulations