High-Speed Brain Scan Used to Diagnose War Vets' PTSD With 90% Accuracy
With so many troops rotating into and out of two different war zones, mental health experts in the U.S. are urgently trying to understand the causes - and a means to assuage or prevent - post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, a group of researchers at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis VA Medical Center may have unlocked the secret to objective PTSD diagnosis: a biomarker in the brain that diagnoses the condition with more than 90 percent accuracy. The seemingly arbitrary ways in which PTSD strikes, as well as the diverse manifestations of symptoms, make diagnosing it something of a crap shoot. Two people exposed to the same traumatic events - a particularly common occurence among soldiers during wartime - can respond to those experiences completely differently; one is able to return to normalcy while the other is crippled by varying degrees of PTSD. The condition can also remain hidden...