Veterans' Administration Brain Research

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Mpls. VA brain research examines resilience to trauma

February 20, 2013 - New research from the Minneapolis VA Medical Center has identified brain patterns that appear to be markers of resilience to trauma. The findings could suggest why some people exposed to trauma develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, while many others do not.

Researchers say the findings, published online Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, point to a central mechanism showing how the brain can recover from traumatic events.

In the study, scientists compared the brains of nearly 200 veterans who had experienced trauma, using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The machine detects the magnetic fields produced when groups of brain cells communicate.

The MEG scans of PTSD-affected brains showed distinctive clusters of neurons locked into interactions with other clusters. read more>>>