Intimate Partner Violence and Emotional Attention: an ERP study

In literature there some works about the high prevalence of adverse health outcomes related to intimate partner violence (IPV). Research concerning the psychological and behavioral alterations following exposure to IPV, associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) too, represents an interesting area of analyses. The aim of this work was to study the variations of event related brain potentials (ERPs), specifically N200 and P300, related to the establishment of visual emotional stimuli in women with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorderdue to IPV.We administeredthe Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI II), Beck Anxiety Inventory(BAI) and a PTSD questionnaire to select a group of women recruited in a Center against Family Violence. Two categories of visual stimuli, emotional pictures (EP) and positive and neutral pictures (NP), were presented during a decisional task, utilizing an oddball paradigm with probabilities of occurrence of 20%, 80% respectively. Experimental Group was composed by 9 women (mean age: 39) with a PTSD due to IPV;Control Group was composed by 9 women (mean age : 33) without PTDS, IPV or depressive or anxiety symptomatology (measured with BDI II and BAI) .Univariate ANOVAs were computed separately for each ERP component in amplitude and latency for electrode. Both N2 and P300 shown significant differences in amplitude (p<,05)and in latency (p<,05). The Parietal Channels (Pz, P3 and P4) and Occipital Channel (01 and 02) showed a decrement in amplitudein IPV group. The IPV group displayed adecrease in amplitude and in latencyof N200 and P300 with significant different in Lateralization too (p<,05). This reduction could be the result of changes in top-down processes such as motivation, the allocation of attention or habituation to the emotional stimulus with negative valence, but currently we are not able to discriminate whether the trauma alone could have caused one or more factors from the options above, but we know that there are examples in the literature in which the trauma caused psychophysiological long-term changes. The meaning and the importance attributed to the stimulus were among the main factors that determine the P300, and then we can consider important that the stimulus in question is relevant and evocative than to the personal experience of the subject. One of the possible interpretations for these findings is that individuals with PTSD exhibit a lower sensitivity threshold when the stimuli in question relate to negative emotional valence to stimuli, and that they live a constant stress thatstructured a habituation of emotional arousal.