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Research Highlights
New research center to focus on returning veterans
January 5, 2008
A new research program based at the
Waco campus of the Central Texas
Veterans Healthcare System will study
brain and mental-health conditions common
among troops returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan: posttraumatic stress disorder,
traumatic brain injury, depression, and
substance abuse.
The Center for Excellence for Research
on Returning War Veterans, supported
by Veterans Integrated Service Network
(VISN) 17, will be led by psychologist
Suzy Gulliver, PhD, former director of
outpatient mental health care at the Brockton
(Mass.) VA. The program will feature
a $3.5-million mobile functional MRI
machine that will travel between Waco,
the Temple VA, and nearby Fort Hood, the
largest Army base in the U.S., from which
more than 40,000 troops have deployed to
Iraq. The fMRI machine, one of few such
mobile research units in the world, will be
used to correlate activity in different areas
of brain with patients’ PTSD symptoms
and with the effects of treatment.
According to Gulliver, the center will
emphasize translating research findings
into practice so that veterans can be helped
as soon as possible.
"There is a reputation that scientists are
hiding out in the ivory tower, and that is
just not going to do for this center," she told
the Waco Tribune-Herald. "We are going to
be in the trenches. We are going to be mak-ing sure that what we are finding out in the
laboratory makes it into clinical practice."
She expects the center to eventually be
home to some 10 core faculty members and
between 50 and 60 staff to assist them. One
of the core investigators will be Keith Young,
PhD, co-director of the Neuropsychiatry Research
Program at the Temple VA and Texas
A&M University Health Sciences Center
College of Medicine. With $5.7 million in
funding from the Department of Defense,
along with other support, his team is studying
the role of genes and brain anatomy in
PTSD. The study will screen and follow
1,400 troops from Fort Hood. In another
study, Young is seeking to identify blood and
brain markers of traumatic brain injury.
According to Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Waco),
who led the effort to secure funding for the
PTSD research, "This groundbreaking research
project is an important part of realizing our goal
of making the Waco VA a world-class PTSD
and mental health care research center, and it is
one of the few programs in the country focused
on the links between genes and brain anatomy
in the development of PTSD and mental illness
in our combat soldiers."
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