Study Published on Group of Brain-injured Vietnam Vets
A study published in the online journal, Brain reports on Vietnam veterans who suffered brain injuries showed a quicker decline in the cognitive functions as they grew older. It was found that the rate of decline can be predicted by how intelligent they were and what level of education they completed before their injury. Interestingly, those who completed a higher education and were considered more intelligent showed less decline in cognitive functioning in the years following their brain injury. Dr Grafman, the senior investigator in the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Health, Maryland, USA, and his colleagues studied a group of Vietnam veterans with penetrating head injury (PHI) 36-39 years after the injury. The veterans were part of the Vietnam Head Injury Study, a follow-up study of about 2,000 Vietnam veterans that has been running since 1967. This report is on the third phase of the study, and it looked at a total of 199 veterans who are now in their mid to late 50s. He believes that greater intelligence is an indicator of the brain’s ability to establish multiple neural connections and that this enables the brain to recover better from injury. This new information on the decline in cognitive functioning seen in the head injured veterans could mean that they might have to take early retirement from employment and might be less able to manage domestic responsibilities. However, the research could be useful for the men, their families and their doctors. “By telling patients and their families that later in life they will be at risk for a more rapid decline in certain abilities compared to unimpaired individuals can be difficult to hear,” he said. “But it can be helpful in terms of long term planning and, potentially, practices could be developed that might protect against it, like staying physically fit and intellectually active.”
