Colonel G. I. Wilson and his daughter Kendra love to play with their dogs in the back yard.
Wilson, who is 64 and has now retired from the Marine Corps, deployed numerous times,
but after his last deployment to Iraq in 2005, Kendra noticed he was changed.
His last tour that he was over there, when he came back, that was the first time that
I ever noticed a significant difference in his personality, the way that he was acting,
just even driving down the freeway, I was like okay . Plus there was the medical aspect
that was the first time I had ever been told that he had been hit by an IED and there was
significant damage.
I thought everyone was reacting differently, my daughter reacted differently, my dog reacted
differently, my daughter and my wife reacted differently and I thought it was them and
of course it was me .
We would have a discussion and ten minutes later he would ask me a question about what
we just discussed and I’m, like, dad we just talked about that.
Wilson found he was having trouble processing information, remembering things, and finding
words. His normally outgoing personality changed - he was withdrawn and depressed. When his
dog died in 2009, three years after he came back from Iraq, it triggered a major breakdown.
I knew from his rank and his past experience that he’d done high-level work. He’s written
long treatises and he was telling me he was having difficult doing the same kind of work
after the blast injury.
Most people diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury or TBI recover in a matter of
months. Baker says there were no tests or brain scans to provide objective evidence
of more lasting damage to the brain.
So you were in the dark, as was the patient? So I needed help, an objective measure as
to whether they had TBI.
Let me open up the door.
Enter Dr. Huang. Using a magnetoencephalograpic or MEG brain scanner - one of only 20 in the
country – Dr. Huang zeroes in on waves emitted by cells in the brain.
For this task we going to like you to perform resting state recording you keep your eyes
closed for five minute and open up for five and then close another five minutes.
It’s frustrating when the conventional neuro-imaging do not provide the location of injury and
the network associated with the injury so that motivated us and me in particular to
develop new technology based upon MEG slow wave measurements to make the invisible injury
visible.
Normal MRI brain scans only pick up the symptoms of mild traumatic brain in about 10% of the
time whereas this slow wave MEG brain scan picks up those symptoms in the brain more
like 90% of the time.
For the first time, Wilson had physical evidence that what he was experiencing had a physiological
cause. Dr. Baker says the MEG brain scans may eventually be able to help her diagnose
whether patients are suffering from symptoms of PTSD or TBI ,which respond to different
kinds of treatment.
One thing it can track people who are getting different kinds of treatment and look at the
resolution through objective scan evidence so you can begin to more carefully compare
the outcomes of new treatment that might be brought in to help with mild TBI.
And for Wilson and his family it was a huge relief to get a confirmation of his physical
injury .
Even though we knew it in our minds and our hearts, it was kind of like the concrete that
it’s not us, he’s not reacting like this because he’s mad at us or his feelings have
changed in any way, there’s an actual physical cause that’s making this happen and that
makes it a little easier to deal with .
I am fortunate because I can see it , they’re able to demonstrate what happened to me even
though it’s basically an invisible injury. What about all those people out there today,
the soldiers, sailors , marines and airmen who have this injury and don’t know, no
one’s seen it
The research that the University has done with the VA is very, very important in getting
to that problem; the invisible injury is not so invisible.
For Colonel Wilson, the MEG brain scans have made all the difference to his ability to
recover and slowly learn how to get back to the life he wants to lead.