Neurobehavioral Toxicity Assessment
Abstract
Information on the mental status of Soldiers is vital to their management in future deployments to prevent acute performance deficits and post-deployment health consequences such as chronic multisymptom illnesses and neurodegenerative diseases. The military needs a parsimonious set of reliable neurosychological tests that (1) provide early detection of individual impairment and (2) predict occupational and deployment health risks. Testing must characterize cognitive lapses and mood changes in healthy individuals faced with relevant operational stressors, including chemical exposures and interactions with other stressors, and should be based on understanding effects of final common pathways in brain physiology (e.g. hypo-or hyperglycemia, and hypoxia, oxidative stress, and inflammation). stressors may affect a common hierarchy of deficits and batteries could be reduced to a few tests such as simple reaction time, matching-to-sample, running memory, math processing, and code substitution, alternatively, these tests together might provide a differential diagnosis. The ultimate goal of unobtrusive real-time mental status monitoring may one day provide the most sensitive indication of a neurochemical exposure.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2007
- Accession Number
- ADA472461
Entities
People
- Karl E. Friedl
- Stephen Grate
- Susan Proctor
Organizations
- United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine