Shell shock solved: Scientists pinpoint brain injury that causes pain, anxiety and breakdowns in soldiers

By the end of World War One the army had identified 80,000 cases of a new condition they termed as 'shell shock'.
Scientists have been perplexed by the symptoms - that include anxiety, facial tics as well as terrible nightmares - ever since but, after more than a century of research, the mystery may have been solved.
Experts now believe that a honeycomb pattern of broken nerve fibres in the brains of veterans that survived improvised explosive devices (IED) attacks, is responsible for the condition officially termed as blast neurotrauma.Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, conducted autopsies on US combat veterans who survived blasts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but later died of other causes.
They discovered that they had the same kind of brain injury – a distinctive honeycomb pattern of broken and swollen nerve fibres throughout critical brain regions, including those that control decision making, memory and reasoning.The pattern is different from brain damage caused by car crashes, drug overdoses or collision sports.
Vassilis Koliatsos, a professor of pathology, neurology, and psychiatry and behavioural sciences at the university, explained that survivable blasts may cause hidden brain injuries that play a role in the psychological and social problems some veterans face after coming home.”Read More   HERE  


(RG) Oh right well that's (PTSD sorted then.