Dr. James Bender recently returned from Iraq after spending 12 months as the brigade psychologist for the 4-1 CAV out of Ft Hood. He served for four and a half years in the Army. During his deployment, he traveled through Southern Iraq, from Basra to Baghdad and many spots in between. He writes a monthly post for the DCoE Blog on health issues related to deployment and being in the military.

Doc Bender on top of the Ziggurat of Ur in Southern Iraq, in February 2009.

Hi. March is Traumatic Bain Injury (TBI) Awareness Month, so I thought I’d talk about your brain.

A TBI is any injury to the brain from an outside source. Some examples of ways one can experience a TBI are hitting your head during a motor vehicle crash, getting knocked out while playing a sport, or getting “your bell rung” during an improvised explosive device blast. Sometimes the sound wave blast from an explosion is enough to give you a TBI; there doesn’t have to be contact with shrapnel or fragments. TBI has been called a “signature wound” of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TBI is tricky stuff, and there’s still a lot scientists don’t know about its causes, effects, symptoms and treatments. That’s because the brain is an unbelievably complex organ. Your brain has about 80 BILLION cells, called neurons and ten to 50 times that amount of glial cells that support neurons.

You also have over one hundred chemical messengers (no one knows the exact number) in your brain, called neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters allow electrical impulses to travel through an almost incalculable number of routes (neural pathways). Furthermore, your brain is organized both horizontally and vertically. That means that every couple of millimeters you go throughout your brain in any direction, you’re coming upon another specialized area that is responsible for a different function, such as:

• Muscle coordination
• Breathing
• Heart rate
• Sleep
• Emotions
• Intelligence
• All five senses
• Memory

With all that stuff going on, it’s no wonder that what we DON’T know about the brain is MORE than what we do know. The good news is that we’re working on it every day, and new discoveries are being made all the time.

In the past, scientists thought that once a part of the brain was damaged, you were out of luck for the rest of your life. We now know that’s not true. The brain can heal itself and actually grow new pathways to make up for damaged parts. Also, the brain actively adjusts and develops throughout your life, not just when you’re little.

Neurologists are now looking at ways to keep the brain from swelling after a TBI by giving patients certain medications. They are also exploring treatments such as inducing hypothermia in patients with severe TBI.

The moral of this story is that the future of TBI treatment is promising, and if you or a loved one has sustained a TBI, there is very good reason to be hopeful.

Thanks for your service. Be safe.

JB

*Find more posts on TBI here.