Word: neural
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...have never had a clear-cut way to be certain a patient has it. But Minnesota scientists now believe they have found a long-sought PTSD fingerprint that confirms the disorder by measuring electromagnetic fields in the brain. The finding, detailed in the latest issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering, could help the 300,000 cases of PTSD that are anticipated among the 2 million U.S. troops who have gone to war in Afghanistan and Iraq...
...diagnostic tools, including computed tomography, magnetic-resonance imaging and X-rays have not been able to detect evidence of PTSD because their snapshots of brain activity occur too slowly. The new diagnostic procedure uses magnetoencephalography (MEG), a way of monitoring the flow of electrical signals along the brain's neural pathways from cell to cell. By using a helmet with 248 noninvasive sensors arrayed around the head, scientists can map patterns of electrical activity inside the skull and detect abnormalities. The Minnesota researchers used MEG to assess 74 U.S. veterans believed to be suffering from PTSD, along with 250 subjects...
...Still, outside experts aren't rushing to declare the challenge of diagnosing PTSD solved. Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute who has studied PTSD, says she's skeptical that there's "a fixed neural signature" for the condition. But she adds that the study "is a first step toward a more thorough analysis that may or may not prove useful in diagnosing, treating and predicting outcomes." (See how one military town deals with posttraumatic stress...
...mumbo jumbo. CBT views your symptoms not as clues to the secrets locked in your tormented unconscious but as a set of learned behaviors and bad habits that you can be trained to give up. As far as CBT is concerned, my phobia was just a piece of bad neural wiring that needed troubleshooting...
...epigenetics. The paper described an experiment with mice led by Larry Feig, a Tufts University biochemist. Feig's team exposed mice with genetic memory problems to an environment rich with toys, exercise and extra attention. These mice showed significant improvement in long-term potentiation (LTP), a form of neural transmission that is key to memory formation. Surprisingly, their offspring also showed LTP improvement, even when the offspring got no extra attention...