Military Service Members and the Brain

The Center for BrainHealth is dedicated to improving the lives of America’s brave fighting men and women. This commitment includes preparing our service members to be the absolute best they can be – before, during, and after deployment. It takes years to make civilians battle-ready, and BrainHealth research is designed to minimize the time it takes to successfully reintegrate veterans into civilian life. 

Hear from former Lieutenant Clint Bruce about why the Center for BrainHealth is a place to train for brain fitness just like military service members train for physical fitness.

Specific service member-related research initiatives underway at the Center for BrainHealth include:

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

• Center for BrainHealth scientists have created, tested, and found effective an effective protocol for improving strategic attention, higher-order gist reasoning, and innovative problem-solving in civilian adults with TBI. Center researchers are now implementing the cognitive training program to determine whether service members with TBI similarly benefit from the intervention through enhancement of cognitive capacity and brain function. The impact of these studies could augment mental productivity and improve cognitive competence in our armed forces while lessening the long-term economic burden of disability – on the service members themselves, their families, and society as a whole. To learn more about this study, click here. 

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

• The use of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) technology along with cognitive-behavioral therapies to help Afghan-Iraqi combat veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. This combination of techniques will help minimize hyper-emotional recall of life-threatening or fearful memories of war that disrupt post-combat everyday life. The threatening feelings once triggered are lessened by rTMS treatments and cognitive therapies during periods when patients are not overly emotional, leading to hope that patients will no longer react dysfunctionally to commonplace events. The Department of Defense has awarded the Center $3 million to further this research and apply it specifically to service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Click here to learn more and participate in the study. 

This research has been generously funded by Ed and Julie Hawes, in honor of his father, Colonel Edwin H. Hawes, Linda and Joel Robuck, The Meadows Foundation and the United States Department of Defense.