Staging combat-related PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a chronic mental condition that may emerge after experiencing a life-threatening trauma. Symptoms severity may differ in PTSD patients. In this paper, we study combat-related PTSD severity based on resting-state eyes-closed EEG signals. Severity score is calculated according to a questionnaire. Four severity classes are defined. After preprocessing, signals are filtered to frequency bands, and segmented to 1s epochs. Power is calculated for above epochs corresponding to the whole band signal and all frequency bands. Statistical analysis is performed using repeated measure ANOVA with Bonferroni post-hoc test. According to our results, there are significant differences between pairwise classes at the significance level of 99%, especially in beta and alpha bands which is in align with a previous study on another PTSD type. Moreover, studying channels in each class reveals the crucial role of CP3.