Traumatic Brain Injuries Of Some Veterans

Traumatic Brain Injuries Of Some Veterans.
The brains of some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who were injured by homemade bombs show an unique model of damage, a small muse about finds. Researchers speculate that the damage - what they call a "honeycomb" pattern of broken and proud nerve fibers - might help explain the phenomenon of "shell shock". That name was coined during World War I, when trench warfare exposed troops to constant bombardment with exploding shells example. Many soldiers developed an array of symptoms, from problems with eyesight and hearing, to headaches and tremors, to confusion, desire and nightmares.

Now referred to as blast neurotrauma, the injuries have become an signal issue again, said Dr Vassilis Koliatsos, the senior researcher on the new study read more here. "Vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have been exposed to a range of situations, including blasts from improvised touchy devices IEDs ," said Koliatsos, a professor of pathology, neurology and psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

But even though the acknowledgement of shell shock goes back 100 years, researchers still be versed little about what is actually going on in the brain. For the new study, published recently in the paper Acta Neuropathologica Communications, his team studied autopsied brain tissue from five US feud veterans. The soldiers had all survived IED bomb blasts, but later died of other causes. The researchers compared the vets' mastermind tissue to autopsies of 24 settle who had died of various causes, including traffic accidents and drug overdoses.

The soldiers' brains showed a dissimilar pattern of damage to nerve fibers in key regions of the brain - including the frontal lobes, which hold the whip hand memory, reasoning and decision-making. He said the "honeycomb" motif of small lesions was unlike the damage seen in people who died from head trauma in a car accident, or those who suffered "punch-drunk syndrome" - planner degeneration caused by repeated concussions.