?Combat stress and perceived threat can lead to Psychiatric Disorders (Van Wingen GA, 2011). The severity of stress and its effects on brain functioning in humans is unknown. In some cases it can have a positive affect but the reality of this is, most cases result in major implications. To really be able to diagnose a person for sure is to ask ourselves, how does the brain form memories of life's significant events? Question that motivates researchers, more specifically, the focus on how traumatic memories and threat are formed, stored retrieves and evaluated ( De Oca B, personal communication October, 20th 2012).
             To get a better understanding on what we have come to know about the brain function and its emotional state, I will explain with a few studies conducted, in order to better understand how these results are put together.
             The Purpose of the first study was to investigate how long periods of severe stress affected the amygdala's functioning in humans, (Van Wingen GA, 2011). Since it was previously suggested in studies on animals with severe stress, would have a reaction of the amygdala which is the key region involved in threat detection and fear, thus, decreases the regulation by the pre-frontal cortex decreases. The ability to self-regulate in distress enhances mental and physical awareness and loss of such capacity, thus allows for risk towards developing PTSD. Another fundamental question in neuroscience is which neural circuit is involved in the control of threat. Recently, functional neuroimaging studies have begun to address this question in humans and suggested that factors bring about individual differences in the neural aftereffect of stress.
             "We assessed amygdala functioning in soldiers before and after deployment to a combat zone, which is typically associated with severe stress exposure". (Van Wingen GA, 2011)." In addition, we included a group of soldiers who were never deployed to control for repeated t...