http://goo.gl/bAKNHi
The new study - led by researchers from VA Puget Sound Health Care System and the University of Washington (UW), both in Seattle - shows that a brain region known as the cerebellum is particularly vulnerable to repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in both mice and humans and concludes that more attention needs to be paid to changes in this region.
The authors hope the finding will help the search for more effective treatments for mTBI, which they note is often referred to "as the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Reporting in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes how mild blast-exposed mice also lose neurons in the same brain regions as the veterans, and that the pattern of loss is similar to that first seen in retired boxers 40 years ago.