A new Spanish study reveals what happens to a woman's brain after sexual assault.
A ground-breaking study by researchers at the Hospital Clinic-IDIBAPS in Barcelona has uncovered startling changes in brain connectivity among women who developed PTSD after a sexual assault.
The findings, presented at the ECNP 2025 Congress in Amsterdam, may help explain why trauma can leave such deep emotional scars and open new paths to personalised treatment.
What is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental health condition that can develop after a person experiences a deeply disturbing or life-threatening event.
For women, sexual assault is one of the strongest triggers.
PTSD is marked by:
Flashbacks and intrusive memories: Reliving the event in nightmares or sudden, vivid recollections.
Heightened anxiety: Feeling constantly on edge, irritable or easily startled.
Emotional numbness: Difficulty in trusting, feeling joy or connecting with others.
Avoidance: Staying away from places, people or conversations that bring back the trauma.
In India, awareness of PTSD remains limited and survivors of sexual violence often face stigma and silence. Studies like this one highlight that trauma is not 'just in the mind' -- it creates measurable changes in the brain.
The study in brief
The research team examined resting-state functional MRI scans of 40 women who had experienced a sexual assault in the past year and were diagnosed with PTSD.
They compared their brain connectivity patterns with a control group of women with no history of assault or PTSD.
The core finding: Communication between two crucial brain regions -- the amygdala, which processes fear and emotional reactions, and the prefrontal cortex, which regulates and controls emotional responses -- was significantly reduced in many participants with PTSD.
In 22 out of 40 women with PTSD, this connectivity dropped to near zero.
These changes may underlie the emotional dysregulation, intrusive memories, mood swings and anxiety commonly seen in PTSD following sexual violence.
Interestingly, the disconnection between amygdala and prefrontal cortex did not directly correlate with how severe the PTSD or depressive symptoms were. This suggests that the brain alteration is a characteristic of trauma-related neural rewiring, not just a marker of symptom severity.
Because the study looked at women within a year of the assault, it emphasises that these brain changes may appear early after trauma.
PTSD following sexual assault is often more severe in women and frequently coexists with depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts.
Although PTSD has been studied extensively in contexts like war, accidents or natural disasters, the neurological effects specific to sexual violence have been under-researched. This study brings attention to that neglected aspect.
The researchers aim to explore whether these connectivity disruptions might help predict which patients will respond to certain therapies, enabling targeted and early interventions.
Long-term studies will be needed to see whether the connectivity changes persist, worsen or improve over time with treatment.
The ultimate hope is that neuroimaging biomarkers may guide more personalised care for survivors of sexual violence.
