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The Effects of Exercise on Female Sensitivity to PTSD
Cook, Darian
Cook, Darian
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Abstract
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating mental disorder with a ~7% U.S. lifetime prevalence, a strong point-of-origin, and vulnerability in females. A prominent symptom of PTSD is intrusive memories of the initial stressor, which results in an exaggerated fear response to mild stressors. Treatment options are lackluster; however, long-term exercise has shown to be effective in reducing anxiety and fear. This thesis evaluated how pre-stress exercise impacted the exaggerated fear response that characterizes PTSD. This was investigated via stress enhanced fear learning (SEFL) in males and females, a preclinical model of PTSD. It was found that exercise mitigated the effects of SEFL and that females exhibited less fear behaviors than males but no relationship between exercise and sex was found. It is not known if the lessened female freezing behaviors is due to lessened effects of the stress itself, if female fear behaviors are different than males, or if this is the results of a sex difference in learning. The results confirmed a sex difference in SEFL mirroring that in PTSD and added to the expansion of studying female sensitivity to health and psychopathologies. This study also provided evidence for exercise as a treatment for PTSD and ultimately suggests that exercise can help decrease fear for those who have experienced a trauma and have an exaggerated fear response to mild stressors but not those who do not have an exaggerated fear response.
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2026-04-24
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The Effects of Exercise on Female Sensitivity to PTSD.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2027-04-24
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Undergraduate Neuroscience Department