Brain Changes From PTSD Observed in Soldiers

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Source: CBC News

Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in American veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries — signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The research could one day allow far easier diagnosis for patients — civilian or military — who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them.

"There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care.

Up to one in five U.S. veterans from the long-running combat in Iraq and Afghanistan are thought to have symptoms of PTSD. An equal number are believed to have suffered traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs — most that do not involve open wounds but hidden damage caused by an explosion's pressure wave.

Many of those TBIs are considered similar to a concussion, but because symptoms may not be apparent immediately, many soldiers are exposed multiple times, despite evidence from the sports world that damage can add up, especially if there's little time between assaults.

"My brain has been rattled," is how a recently retired marine whom Hayes identifies only as Sgt. N described the 50 to 60 explosions he estimates he felt while part of an ordnance disposal unit.

Brain's connective tissue compromised

Hayes studied the man in a new way, tracking how water flows through tiny, celery stalk-like nerve fibres in his brain. He found otherwise undetectable evidence that those fibres were damaged in a brain region that explained his memory problems and confusion.

The non-invasive technique is called "diffusion tensor imaging," which merely adds a little time to a standard MRI scan. Water molecules constantly move, bumping into each other and then bouncing away. Measuring the direction and speed of that diffusion in nerve fibres can tell if the fibres are intact or damaged. Those fibres provide a kind of highway along which the brain's cells communicate. The bigger the gaps, the more interrupted the brain's work becomes.

more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/11/10/ptsd-brain-scans.html

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