The blasts caused by improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan appear to inflict a fundamentally different type of brain damage than do more traditional sources of concussions, such as blunt trauma. The findings point toward new approaches to diagnosing and monitoring these injuries, which have been a huge concern to the military in recent years. The research also begins to resolve a controversy in brain-injury research--whether soldiers who are near an explosion but don't get hit in the head can still suffer a unique type of brain damage.
Regular concussions are typically caused by direct impact to the head, such as in a fall, or acceleration injuries, as in car accidents. In contrast, blast-induced brain injuries can include both of these factors as well as one that is unique to explosions--a rapid pressure wave that may wreak its own havoc on the brain. As a growing number of troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan with signs of brain injury--post-deployment surveys suggest that 10 to 20 percent of all deployed troops have experienced concussions--the military has been under increasing pressure to understand how this pressure wave affects the brain, as well as how best to diagnose and treat the resulting injuries.
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/23368/Great. More damage to consider.
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