New Brain Scans Can Spot PTSD

Neuroscientists think they may have found a scientific method to identify post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using a brain imaging method called magnetoencephalography (MEG). In the test study, the scientists studied 74 vets with PTSD and 250 civilians without and were able to spot the PTSD sufferers with 90% accuracy. "MEG machines are a fast, sensitive and accurate way to measure electric activity in the brain. Whereas CT scans and MRIs record brain signals every few seconds, MEGs can do it by the millisecond, catching biomarkers and brain activity that the other tests inevitably miss. The study could be a breakthrough for the military, who've been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crap-shoot: symptoms can take years to show up, and vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas. The Pentagon's already been pushing for more objective, systematized diagnosis tools, like portable at-home sleep monitors and genetic testing to detect PTSD vulnerability. They've even launched a program to create stress-mitigating pharmaceuticals."

False positives

[jfengel]

Spotting 100% is easy: you just need a machine with a blinking light that says "PTSD". Unfortunately that puts a lot of healthy people in therapy.

Nobody expects Wired to figure that out, but the original press release [eurekalert.org] (scavenged from the array of irrelevant links) doesn't say, either.

I assume that the actual article (in the Journal of Neural Engineering) actually says something about it. Anybody got a subscription?

Possible fault in the sample group

[NevarMore]

"scientists studied 74 vets with PTSD and 250 civilians "

Is it possible that they aren't spotting PTSD but a wiring from a soldier? I am a civillian with NO military experience, but I do hang around several soldiers and police officers. Each group has similar mannerisms and they have ALL had similar experiences within that group (basic training for the green guys, the academy for the blue ones). I see a good chance that this new scan could be picking that up.

A more valid group would be:
  - some vets without PTSD
  - some vets with PTSD
  - some civillians with PTSD
  - some civillians without PTSD

Of those four groups some significant correlation would be helpful too. For example a set of soldiers from Afghanistan with and without PTSD. A set of civillians that had been through the same or similar trauma (say armed robbery or 9/11 or plane accident). Breaking it down by age would also be useful, a Vietnam veteran who has had a few years either with or without treatment would be a lot different than a recent return home from the Sandbox.

Re:what about the other 10%

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

IF they can really achieve 90% detection rate (and that's a huge if), then that'd be hugely impressive.

FYI, Mammograms only have roughly an 80% chance of detecting breast cancer. http://breastscreening.cancer.gov/data/performance/diagnostic/rate_age_time.html [cancer.gov]

Rates of detection of other cancers are often much worse. And rates of early detection (as opposed to self-report) of mental illnesses are worse again.

Re:what about the other 10%

[icebike]

Its not the only diagnostic tool in the kit. In fact you probably wouldn't even encounter this device if you weren't showing some symptoms.

90% of anything detected by brain imaging is pretty amazing, since even tumors can't always be spotted.

Re:what about the other 10%

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Anybody who would use the test, in its current form, as an automated "confirm/deny" mechanism deserves a punch in the face. However, the establishment of a fairly reliable correlation between a psychological condition that could previously only be diagnosed subjectively("subjectively" in the sense that the patient has to introspect and report symptoms for a diagnosis to be made, not in the "Oh, its just subjective, it must just be you" sense) and an objectively measurable electrical phenomenon is pretty cool.

It is more or less a commonplace, for anybody not deeply in the grips of some metaphysical or dualist theory, that psychological phenomena must have material correlates; but actually hunting them down and making them useful is fairly tricky work.

Re:what about the other 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

An interesting point is that they don't distinguish in any of TFAs whether they're talking false negatives, false positives, or a combination. Separate rates would matter.

PTSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lewis Black made a very valid point in one of his routines about the disambiguation of this problem known as post traumatic stress disorder. Over time, it has gone from 'shell shock' to 'battle fatigue' to 'post traumatic stress disorder' and now to a simple acronym: PTSD. It's unfortunate, because the acronym carries none of the weight that the original name (shell shock) used to carry. I won't go so far as to say that we are moving to something like Newspeak and the "destruction of words" (Syme, character from Orwell's 1984), but this cannot be good, especially not for the poor souls afflicted with it.

Re:what about the other 10%

[ubrgeek]

You're absolutely right. In fact, I was going to use some of my mod points to do just that - mark him as a troll. But I re-read and think his points are valid and even insightful (sans the punch-in-the-face component.) But, the poor choice of moderation points applies to ArsonSmith's posting as well. While his attempt may be at humor, it wasn't funny. It was the equivalent of posting a comment to a story about some new test being able to detect HIV early on and saying, "Hey! At least now they'll know your insurance should cover it before you die." I've spent a lot of time talking with folks who work for me who went through "shock and awe" and battles before and since. Having them talk to me about the dreams they have of friends who get blown up as they stand next to them - friends who have actually come home and are doing fine - is hardly a part of my day about which I'd make jokes.

New tools may hep catch more cases

[the Dragonweaver]

This is a very helpful diagnostic tool as there is still a stigma associated with any sort of mental disorder, particularly in the military. Some subsets handle it better than others; while some groups are more in the mindset of "get it treated" the idea of "malingerers" still holds true in some places. Self-diagnosis lags when there's a stigma attached.

I would also be interested to see this used to help diagnose sexual trauma. Among the female population of the military, rape is still the highest inducer of PTSD, and I'm sure that holds true for civilians as well.

The biggest reason for PTSD is that we, as humans in general, are not wired to cope with extreme trauma. Nor are we particularly wired to cause death. We train our military to automate these actions but in some people the brain can't cope with what the body has done. Look up "Achilles in America" for more information on the subject— there have been many studies done in and out of the military, and there are quite a few higher-ups who want to see the best treatments possible— and some who are looking into ways to mitigate the effects before they occur.

How just like the US military

[yttrstein]

To launch headlong into the most expensive, unworkable, unreasonable, ill-thought, entirely not-researched solutions. I'm not talking so much about the brain scan here; Harvard came up with the idea that PTSD could be detected in the brain, along with bi polar disorder and a few other conditions which might have detectable pathologies, and it's a very good idea.

What's a very bad idea is the notion that PTSD can be stopped, or at least mitigated with chemical or mechanical tools. Once you already have PTSD, or indeed any disorder on the dissociative scale (Howell, Chu), then there is some good evidence that pharmaceuticals can help mitigate some, but not all of the symptoms. Currently those pharmaceuticals fall into two major classes: sedative-hypnotics and atypical antipsychotics. Sedative-hypnotics, particularly benzodiazepines, cause massive problems with the creation of short term memories. Atypical antipsychotics have a host of horrible side effects, from flattened affect to tardive dyskenisia-- which is the permanent, uncontrolled flexing of small muscles, like facial tics, thumb-wiggles and circles, and shuffling gait. In short, they should not be used for any condition which is not treatable by any other means.

Also, there is no evidence (as has been noted by Harvard, at least) that there is any sort of genetic pre-disposition to the development of PTSD, or any other environmentally caused dissociative disorder. That is a dead end.

Furthermore, there is also absolutely no evidence that the pre-dosing of atypical antipsychotics or sedatives have any effect whatsoever on the development of PTSD, and in fact in both cases may very probably result in soldiers with far less willingness to shoot the enemy in the face than the military requires.

The fact is that the Pentagon is and has always created an enormous mess out of the minds that manage to survive their plans, and there's simply no way around it. It would be really great, I think, to come up with some way to make war more palatable for the people who have to be in it, but somehow the very root of the notion seems disingenuous.

War is fucking hell.

Re:Possible fault in the sample group

[Anonymous Coward]

The article even explicitly says:

Next up, the researchers want to evaluate 500 vets, alongside 500 civilians, to further validate their findings.

It sounds like a case of "well we didn't have enough grant money to do this study properly..."

Rightly or wrongly, there's an absolute boatload of money being thrown at the US military. If researchers wants a piece of that gravy train, they're going to have to make it mostly about the military - if it started to look like they were helping victims of domestic violence with PTSD, for example, the Republicans would be on them like pit bulls on a granny.