New Brain Scans Can Spot PTSD

Neuroscientists think they may have found a scientific method to identify post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using a brain imaging method called magnetoencephalography (MEG). In the test study, the scientists studied 74 vets with PTSD and 250 civilians without and were able to spot the PTSD sufferers with 90% accuracy. "MEG machines are a fast, sensitive and accurate way to measure electric activity in the brain. Whereas CT scans and MRIs record brain signals every few seconds, MEGs can do it by the millisecond, catching biomarkers and brain activity that the other tests inevitably miss. The study could be a breakthrough for the military, who've been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crap-shoot: symptoms can take years to show up, and vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas. The Pentagon's already been pushing for more objective, systematized diagnosis tools, like portable at-home sleep monitors and genetic testing to detect PTSD vulnerability. They've even launched a program to create stress-mitigating pharmaceuticals."

Comments

Re:Car accidents

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I can confirm the car-crash case, at least anecdotally. It happened to me.

Head-on collision at 60mph, on a stretch of dark freeway. We ran into two cars that were parallel parked, jackknifed across the two lefthand lanes. (Never did find out why they chose that brilliant configuration.)

After that, I could barely sit in a car. All I can say is, once you've slammed into something at speed on a road that you were conditioned to believe would never contain any stationary objects, your brain just snaps. You're in heightened vigilance mode, all the time. I could not see an oncoming pair of headlights without tensing up, in case it might veer into the car. On a curved road, seeing the cars coming the other direction would have me squirming down below the level of the window. The accompanying feeling was so awful that, when I once went on a longish drive with a couple of friends to go to a concert, I just got in the back seat and lay down in a ball on the floor boards. As long as you didn't give me any triggers -- like seeing potential crash hazards -- I was fine. Put me in the front seat, and my teeth would be gritted and I'd be writhing around like a maniac. And I could laugh about it, even then. I knew I was acting like a wimp. I just couldn't do anything about it.

But like you say, the difference is that it's temporary. Long story short, all it took was some seriously reckless driving with a friend to give me another jolt and "snap me out of it." And I was fine, almost literally just like that. I kinda suspect that method is not going to work for the kind of chronic PTSD that military personnel confront.