The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders

Summary & key facts

This review paper suggests that problems in body-based senses — especially the vestibular system (balance/motion) and the somatosensory system (touch and body position) — may help explain many symptoms of trauma-related disorders. The authors propose that trauma can disrupt low-level, brainstem sensory processing and that this disruption can cascade into changes in arousal, emotion regulation, and a person’s sense of self. They describe different sensory patterns in PTSD versus PTSD with dissociation and offer a hierarchical brain model as a working framework for research and clinical assessment, while noting the ideas are theoretical and not yet proven.

Key facts:

• The paper defines somatic sensory processing as vestibular (balance/motion) and somatosensory (touch/body position) signals and says these systems can strongly affect regulation, social-emotional functioning, and sense of self.
• The authors propose that trauma can cause dysfunction at brainstem levels of somatic sensory processing, which may then influence physiological arousal, affect regulation, and higher-order brain functions.
• PTSD with the dissociative subtype (PTSD + DS) is reported to occur in up to 44% of people who have PTSD.
• People with PTSD are often described as having sensory hyper-responsivity: they detect and react to sensory input at lower thresholds, which can lead to frequent overwhelm and sustained high arousal.
• People with dissociative symptoms tend to show sensory hypo-responsivity: they may have higher thresholds for sensing the body and can experience reduced pain (analgesia) or feelings of detachment from the body (depersonalization).
• The vestibular system (inner ear structures that detect head acceleration and gravity) is continuously active and provides constant information about the body’s position in space.
• The article is a neuroscientific review that presents a hierarchical model linking somatic sensory processes to limbic and neocortical systems. The authors describe it as a working framework and note that the exact neurobiological links rem

Abstract

Although the manifestation of trauma in the body is a phenomenon well-endorsed by clinicians and traumatized individuals, the neurobiological underpinnings of this manifestation remain unclear. The notion of somatic sensory processing, which ...

Topics

Action Observation and Synchronization Mental Health and Psychiatry Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

Categories

Health Sciences Medicine Psychiatry and Mental health

Tags

Affect (linguistics) Arousal Artificial intelligence Biochemistry Biology Cognitive psychology Communication Computer science Developmental psychology Gene Neuroscience Perspective (graphical) Psychology Sensory processing Sensory system Somatic cell Somatosensory system