A group of Bay Area scientists have unraveled some surprising secrets about post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD which one day could lead to better therapies and treatments. At UC Berkeley, neuroscientist Dr. Daniela Kaufer and now UCSF post-doc Kimberly Long — along with UCSF and San Francisco scientists Radiologist Dr. Linda Chao and Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Neylan — may have provided a convincing reason why some people are resilient to trauma and others are susceptible. According to statistics, 70 percent of American adults experience at least one traumatic event in a lifetime. Twenty percent of those will develop PTSD, and their symptoms vary dramatically. In their research, the scientists made two important discoveries: that anxiety and traumatic stress are linked to increased myelin in a part of the brain where there is less myelin; and that where the increased myelin is found correlates to the particular symptom. For more on this, see our story at Berkeley News.