FEMALES with posttraumatic stress disorder showed reduced non-emotional working memory capacity and slower responses on the N-back task, with 2-back slowing linked to greater avoidance and overall symptom severity. In a civilian cohort, 111 women with PTSD were compared with 120 non-trauma-exposed controls. Most PTSD cases followed interpersonal violence. Participants completed 0-back and 2-back tasks using numeric stimuli, alongside a standardized neuropsychological battery and self-report measures of PTSD and depression.
Group differences were load dependent for accuracy. The PTSD group performed significantly less accurately on the 2-back condition, while 0-back accuracy did not differ from controls, indicating intact basic attention and matching but reduced capacity to maintain and update information under higher working memory demands. Reaction times were prolonged in the PTSD group on both the 0-back and 2-back tasks, consistent with broader processing slowing or increased effort even at minimal load.
Within the PTSD group, slower reaction time on the 2-back condition correlated with more severe avoidance symptoms and higher total PTSD severity after adjusting for age. Reported statistics included lower 2-back accuracy and significant reaction time differences, with correlations between 2-back reaction time and avoidance severity and between 2-back reaction time and total severity. Together, these findings support a symptom specific cognitive profile in PTSD in which avoidance relates to slowed performance when working memory load increases.
The study adds evidence that non-emotional working memory deficits are present in PTSD even when emotional content is removed. For clinicians, this pattern of preserved low-load accuracy, reduced high-load accuracy, and globally slower responses may help inform cognitive assessment strategies and guide targeted rehabilitation approaches in women with PTSD.
Reference:
Ueda N et al. Decreased non-emotional working memory capacity in women with PTSD: association with symptomatology. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2025;16(1):2543079.
