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It was mid-October 2011 and first platoon had already been fighting for its life for a few days. The 10 Afghans and 26 Americans had withstood repeated assaults by an estimated 300 to 500 insurgents who had crossed the border from bases in Pakistan. Fighters got within five meters of the platoon's battle positions with some coming through the perimeter wire. They almost overran the position four times something that has happened before in Kunar province, with deadly consequences. Now the insurgents had the position dialed in on their 82mm mortars.
"Sgt. Sanes got hit with two rounds simultaneously on his position within five meters," platoon Staff Sgt. Anthony Fuentes told TIME a few days after the fight. The rounds landed just as an Afghan Army sergeant was firing a recoilless rifle. The blast knocked him to the ground and his round exploded inside their position. After that, "our weapons squad leader [Sanes] was giving fire commands to a rock. That's what happened in our case. They got nauseous, they couldn't vomit (but they wanted to), they couldn't focus and they had double vision," says Fuentes.
His eyes still somewhat glassy after coming off the mountaintop position of Outpost Shal just four days before, Staff Sgt. Michael Sanes said, "I was a little out of it and I was screaming for my [machine] gunner to get back on the gun and shoot. I was like... 'shoot and shoot,' and he was already shooting. I was a little out of it from the blast. I got my bell rung." It was Sanes' third combat tour. The heavy fighting to take the mountaintop position lasted some eight days and the platoon had to call in multiple danger close artillery missions and airstrikes in which heavy ordnance was dropped within 300 meters of their positions.
The pounding that Sanes and his men took may have been intense but multiply it by hundreds and thousands of incidents over a range of severity and you have the potential causes for what may be a murkily diagnosed set of symptoms affecting U.S. servicemen and veterans. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), co-chairman of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, has called Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) "the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." Though no clear statistics exist for TBI, it is estimated that there are between 115,000 and 400,000 veterans who now suffer from at least mild versions of it.
Jason Padgett doesn't have a PhD, a college degree or even a background in math. His talent was born out of a true medical mystery that scientists around the world are still trying to unravel. "I'm obsessed with numbers, geometry specifically," ABC News quoted him as saying. "I literally dream about it. There's not a moment that I can't see it, and it just doesn't turn off," he said.
Ten years ago, the 41-year0old was only interested in two things - working out and partying. One night he was walking out of a karaoke club in Tacoma when he was brutally attacked by muggers who beat and kicked him in the head repeatedly. Padgett said they were after his 99-dollar leather jacket. "All I saw was a bright flash of light and the next thing I knew I was on my knees on the ground and I thought, 'I'm gonna get killed,'" he said.
At the time, doctors said he had a concussion, but within a day or two, Padgett began to notice something remarkable. This college dropout who couldn't draw became obsessed with drawing intricate diagrams, but didn't know what they were. "I see bits and pieces of the Pythagorean theorem everywhere. "Every single little curve, every single spiral, every tree is part of that equation," he said.
The diagrams he draws are called fractals and Padgett can draw a visual representation of the formula Pi, that infinite number that begins with 3.14. "A fractal is a shape that when you take the shape a part into pieces, the pieces are the same or similar to the whole. So say I had 1,000 pictures of you, that were little and I put all those little pictures of you in the right spot to make the exact same picture of you, but bigger," he said.
Much like the mathematician John Nash, played by Russell Crowe in the 2001 film, 'A Beautiful Mind', researchers believe Padgett has a remarkable gift. To better understand how his brain works, Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and her team flew Padgett to Finland to run a series of tests.
A scan of Padgett's brain showed damage that was forcing his brain to overcompensate in certain areas that most people don't have access to, Brogaard explained. The result was Padgett was now an acquired savant, meaning brilliant in a specific area. "Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person super human," Brogaard said.
Mugging turns college dropout into real-life 'A Beautiful Mind' math genius
Only one brain sample has been collected so far as officials embark on a lengthy process of determining how best to educate troops about brain donation and their families about consenting to the process after a loved one dies.
A big part of this is this educational outreach campaign that we have (in preparation) so that families and servicemembers will know that this repository exists and the importance of the work that we do, said Dan Perl, a neuropathologist who is lead investigator for research at the Rockville, Md., site.
Perl said he hopes the donation process will work in a similar way to how many servicemembers agree to donate vital organs to save lives.
Mild traumatic brain injury is one of the signature injuries of the war, said Jonathon Woodson, the Pentagons top medical officer. The brain repository is one way of helping with untangling some of the mysteries. A key goal is understanding subtle changes to the brain, which over time can result in dementia.
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Speaking at the White House, he announced an initial $100m investment to shed light on how the brain works and provide insight into diseases such as Alzheimer's and epilepsy. President Obama said initiatives like the Human Genome Project had transformed genetics; now he wants to do the same with the brain. The project will be carried out by both public and private-sector scientists. The project is called Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies - or BRAIN. Mr Obama said: There is this enormous mystery waiting to be unlocked, and the BRAIN initiative will change that by giving scientists the tools they need to get a dynamic picture of the brain in action and better understand how we think and learn and remember. And that knowledge will be transformative."
Next frontier
The project will begin in 2014, and will involve the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The $100m investment will be used to develop new technologies to investigate how the billions of individual cells in the human brain interact. Scientists will also focus on how the brain records, stores and processes information, and investigate how brain function is linked to behaviour.
Mr Obama said that while our understanding of the brain was growing, there was still a long way to go. "As humans we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than the atom, but we still haven't unlocked the mystery of the 3lb of matter that sits between our ears," he said. The project will also involve partnerships with the private sector. This includes the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which has committed to spending $60m annually on projects relating to the BRAIN initiative, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which has dedicated $28m. An ethics committee will oversee the work.
Mr Obama said that it was worth investing in science, claiming that it would help to create new jobs and boost the economy. He said that basic research was "a driver of growth". "We can't afford to miss these opportunities while the rest of the world races ahead," he added. The funding announcement comes after recent news of another push in neuroscience in Europe. About 80 European research institutions and some from outside the EU will take part in the Human Brain Project, which is estimated to cost more than 1bn euros. The project will use supercomputer-based models and simulations to reconstruct a virtual human brain to develop new treatments for neurological conditions.
BBC News - Obama proposes brain mapping project
Imagine if we could reverse traumatic brain injury or PTSD for our veterans who are coming home ... Thats what were imagining. Thats what were hoping for, President Barack Obama said at the project announcement, before a crowd of neurology scientists and surgeons. Theyre ambitious goals, but theyre achievable. Officials said the new effort -- a grand challenge along the lines of the moon race and the human genome project -- was mentioned by Obama in his State of the Union address and is designed as a far-reaching partnership. Medical schools and private firms will work alongside government institutes to develop a map of neural pathways and chemical structures in the brain. Tracking trillions of microscopic mental activities will require new computer programs, data storage systems and analytical approaches.
Half of the $100 million will go the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, with the goal of demonstrating breakthrough applications based on the new findings. Director Arati Prabhakar said her agencys work in the field was prompted by the injuries of returning troops and the promise of medical breakthroughs that could improve their lives. According to the Congressional Research Service, more than 250,000 troops have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with traumatic brain injuries. That doesnt account for tens of thousands more whose brain injuries stay undiagnosed for months after the return home. Department of Veterans Affairs researchers say as many as one in four veterans might have suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving overseas. DARPA researchers are looking at regenerating processing systems within the brain, in an effort to help reverse memory loss, mood swings and decreased brain function from battlefield injuries. The new effort, Prabhakar said, will help move that work ahead.
The White House has assembled a dream team of top neurological experts to develop a plan of attack for the project, with the $100 million in fiscal 2014 as the first installment of a multi-year funding effort. Dr. Ali Rezai, director of Ohio State Universitys Neuroscience Program, called the White House effort a significant step forward for the research field. The frontier here is very large, he said. Cancer and heart disease knowledge has developed nicely over the years. But the brain is still very much unknown. He said researchers know how traumatic brain injury can affect speech and memory, but better maps of neural pathways and chemical interactions hold the promise of cures and preventive care for those wounds.
For example, more knowledge of how different parts of the brain interact could help predict which troops are more susceptible to PTSD or concussions. Learning how to fix different parts of the brain could restore wounded troops ability to speak or walk. Prabhakar said the work could also produce dramatic results with other battlefield injuries, such as helping amputees control advanced prosthetics with their minds. Obama said he hopes the work will also produce new treatments for individuals battling epilepsy, Alzheimers disease and Parkinsons disease. We have a chance to improve the lives of not just millions, but billions of people on this planet, he said. But its going to require a serious effort, a sustained effort.
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