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 bizarre motif of damage, a small ruminate on finds. Researchers speculate that the damage - what they call a "honeycomb" pattern of broken and tumescent nerve fibers - might help explain the phenomenon of "shell shock". That style was coined during World War I, when trench warfare exposed troops to constant bombardment with exploding shells. Many soldiers developed an array of symptoms, from problems with view and hearing, to headaches and tremors, to confusion, appetite and nightmares.

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

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

The soldiers' brains showed a plain 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" mould 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" - acumen degeneration caused by repeated concussions.