Auburn University faculty across campus and at the MRI Center in Auburn's Research Park are working on a project, which focuses on soldiers who have suffered brain trauma.
Thomas Denney, principle investigator and project leader in the study, said the study began when he connected with a research psychologist at Fort Rucker.
"We went to Fort Rucker and told them about the research center we were building and told them the types of things we were interested in studying," Denney said. "They told us what they were doing and we found where it overlapped and formed a project."
Denney said the team has also collaborated with Chris Wolf, neuropsychologist at Fort Benning, who recruits soldiers into the research program because he sees soldiers with head trauma all the time.
"You have to have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan to be a part of the study," Denney said. "You have to have Post Concussion Syndrome or PTSD and we also see people who went overseas and didn't suffer a concussion and use them as a control group for the study."
The research facility has been in Research Park since 2010 and houses a 3 Tesla scanner and a 7 Tesla scanner.
From these, we can see inside the brain," Denney said. "The nice thing about MRI is there is no ionizing radiation and you can also do a lot more in terms of the different types of scans that are available."
Denney said that this is a one-year pilot study and that they are trying to gather as much data as possible at this point.
"Whenever you do a project like this, you look for the changes you on a post concussion syndrome soldier versus someone who has been deployed and didn't suffer a concussion," Denney said. "We are starting to see some differences in brain activation between post concussion syndrome patients and the controls and we are trying to figure out exactly what the differences mean."
The tests for the Post Concussion Syndrome and PTSD are different.
"For Post Concussion Syndrome, we are testing how well soldiers with and without the syndrome can regulate their emotions," Denney said. "For PTSD, it is more of a startle response to see how they respond to a startle type stimulus."
Denney also said that they are able to do a number of different scans.
We do an anatomical scan where we are looking at the structure of the brain, which is a platform that we base a lot of our analysis on," Denney said. "Then we do what is called a functional MRI scan and that is where you can actually image what parts of the brain are active during a particular task."
Denney said it takes a long time to process the data, but is pleased with the progress made so far.
"No one has really looked at this the way we are looking at it by doing neuropsychology testing, genomics and imaging in a military population," Denney said. "We are the only ones that we know of who are doing that."
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