psychologists aren't usually called to the battlefield, but the 2008-09 gaza war gave tel aviv university researchers a unique picture of how anxiety manifests（证明，显示） during stressful situations. in a new study in the american journal of 1（精神病学） , prof. yair bar haim of tau's department of 2 reports that people confronted with acute stress -- daily rocket attacks -- tend to dissociate from threats instead of becoming more 3. this research overturns accepted convention（惯例，习俗） and may lead to better understanding of the 4 5 acute stress reactions, he says.
though conducted on the battlefields of the middle east, prof. bar haim's research has 6 7（反响，影响） for u.s. soldiers as well. "the american government is 8 with large numbers of soldiers coming home from afghanistan and iraq suffering from ptsd," he says. "our study is important because it's the first to show the effects of war-related acute stress in real time." it also has significant implications for the understanding of other known ptsd triggers, such as 9 or motor vehicle accidents.
a real-time picture of stress
using fmri and other imaging techniques, prof. bar haim investigated 10 mechanisms related to anxiety 11 and how people respond 12（认知地） to stress. he also studied how people process threats when they are under severe stress. his previous studies, both at tel aviv university and through the u.s. national institutes of health, looked at neural, 13 and 14 factors related to threat processing in the brain, and these gave prof. bar haim and his team a context to infer（推断，推论） what happens in the brain when behavioral data on acute stress situations is collected.
in the most recent study, he looked at israelis close to the firing zone, near the border with gaza, where they had been living with the daily stress of rocket threats for eight years. the threat became more severe during the war. while his test subjects completed various computer tasks to test behavior, dr. bar haim monitored processes at the deeper, unseen levels of the brain.
he found that subjects under acute stress developed symptoms of post-trauma（创伤，外伤） and most often manifested a dissociative state rather than one of hypervigilance（高度警觉） . most important for clinical applications, the researchers found that the symptoms produce a measurable effect –– a neuromarker -- that may be used to predict who are the individuals most at risk for developing 15 ptsd following a traumatic event.
less vigilant to personal threats
prof. bar haim says this is the first study in the scientific literature to describe real-time effects of war-related stress on its victims. in the previous literature, scientists assumed that people under stress would become more vigilant to threats, rather than disengaging（分离，退出） . "this calls for some revision of the foundations of the stress-ptsd model," he says.
prof. bar haim is now conducting a study involving israeli soldiers that investigates the potential use of computer-based tasks to modify and retrain the attention system of the 16（折磨，痛苦） patient. called "attention 17 18 treatment," the approach has been successfully 19 in several clinical trials both in the u.s. and in israel. soon it will be tested in idf veterans with ptsd.
prof. bar haim emphasizes that the treatment of anxiety-related disorders is not an easy task. but he hopes that his work in the field, coupled with imaging technologies and computer software, will lead to more effective ways of treating victims of anxiety and ptsd so they can lead normal and healthy lives.
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