Predictors & Mechanisms of Adolescent PTSD

This study examines how adolescents with trauma-related symptoms respond to stress and strong emotions. The study assesses brain activity, physiological responses, and behavior during experimental tasks that involve responding to potential threats, regulating emotions, and repeatedly imagining details of a personally experienced stressful or traumatic event using a script-driven imagery task. The study evaluates whether repeated imaginal exposure is associated with changes in anxiety and physiological responses across sessions, and whether baseline patterns of threat reactivity and emotion regulation are associated with individual differences in response to the exposure task. Outcomes include self-reported anxiety, subjective distress ratings, and psychophysiological indices such as heart rate, skin conductance, and electromyographic activity. The goal of this research is to improve understanding of biobehavioral processes related to trauma exposure in adolescents and to identify potential predictors of response to exposure-based intervention components relevant to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).