Army Testing Brains Of GIs Before Deployment

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The New York Sun

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Before they leave for Iraq, thousands of troops with the 101st Airborne Division line up at laptop computers to take a test: basic math, matching numbers and symbols, and identifying patterns. They press a button quickly to measure response time.

It’s all part of a fledgling Army program that records how soldiers’ brains work when healthy, giving doctors baseline data to help diagnose and treat the soldiers if they suffer a traumatic brain injury — the signature injury of the Iraq war.

“This allows the Army to be much more proactive,” the division surgeon for the 101st, Lieutenant Colonel Mark McGrail, said. “We don’t want to wait until the soldier is getting out of the Army to say, ‘But I’ve had these symptoms.'”

The mandatory brain-function tests are starting with the 101st at Fort Campbell and are expected to spread to other military bases in the next couple of months. Commanders at each base will decide whether to adopt the program.

The tests provide a standard, objective measurement for each soldier’s reaction time, their short-term memory, and other cognitive skills. That data would be used when the soldiers come home to identify mild brain trauma that can often go unnoticed and untreated.

One veterans group wants to ensure the Army doesn’t use the results to deny treatment by claiming that soldiers’ problems came from pre-existing conditions.

“We certainly think these tests should not be used to reduce the responsibility that the Army has to treat the soldiers who have served,” the director of policy for Veterans for America, Jason Forrester, said.

About 7,500 Fort Campbell soldiers have completed the tests, Dr. Robert Schlegel, a University of Oklahoma researcher who administers the 10-minute exams to soldiers, said as they file quickly through a testing center.

One question asks soldiers to memorize patterns on the screen and then identify them later among several different patterns. Other questions require soldiers to match numbers and symbols, or complete simple addition and subtraction problems.

“Everybody functions a bit differently in terms of how quickly they react to things, how well they process things and remember things and so forth,” Dr. Schlegel said.

Brain injuries caused by explosions have become some of the most common combat wounds suffered in Iraq. Thirty percent of soldiers taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center since 2003 suffered traumatic brain injuries, according to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.


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