Ever wonder how a traumatic event impacts your brain’s behavior? According to WebMD, disorders such as PTSD shrink the areas of your brain that store memories, otherwise known as the hippocampus. PTSD causes your brain to stay in a fight or flight mode and eventually effects your brain’s ability to store short-term memories.

To gain a better understanding of how PTSD works, here are two different brain scans, one without PTSD and one experiencing the effects of PTSD: