Thermal signature of fear conditioning in mild post traumatic stress disorder

• Abnormal emotional regulation was observed in PTSD patients.
• PTSD patients presented high arousal to stressors with increases in the ANS response.
• fIR imaging during fear conditioning could register ANS reactivity to emotion.
• PTSD patients presented higher tonic component of autonomic activity than controls.
• PTSD patients had difficulty inhibiting fear response to a neutral stimulus.

Fear conditioning has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We examined fear processing in PTSD patients with mild symptoms and in individuals who did not develop symptoms (both groups consisting of victims of a bank robbery), through the study of fear-conditioned response. Conditioned responses were quantified by the skin conductance response (SCR) and the facial thermal response, the latter being measured by high-resolution functional thermal infrared (fIR) imaging.We found: (a) a change of the physiological parameters with respect to the baseline condition in both control subjects and PTSD patients during the conditioning phase; (b) the permanence of the conditioning effect in the maintenance phase in both control and PTSD patients; (c) patients and controls did differ for the variation across the phases of the physiological parameters rather than for their absolute values, showing that PTSD patients had a prolonged excitation and higher tonic component of autonomic activity. These results, although preliminary, indicate that the analysis of SCR and facial thermal response during the conditioning paradigm is a promising psychometric method of investigation, even in the case of low level of PTSD symptom severity. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to discriminate between control subjects and PTSD patients with mild symptoms through infrared thermal imaging. It may suggest feasible approaches for diagnostic screening in the early phases of the disorder and in the assessment of preventive measures and therapies.