"Powerful scans are letting doctors watch just how the brain changes in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion-like brain injuries - signature damage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It's work that one day may allow far easier diagnosis for patients - civilian or military - who today struggle to get help for these largely invisible disorders. For now it brings a powerful message: Problems too often shrugged off as "just in your head" in fact do have physical signs, now that scientists are learning where and how to look for them. "There's something different in your brain," explains Dr. Jasmeet Pannu Hayes of Boston University, who is helping to lead that research at the Veterans Affairs' National Center for PTSD. "Just putting a real physical marker there, saying that this is a real thing," encourages more people to seek care." - William Harryman from Bookmarklet

some people in the field have known this for years - in survivors of long-term abuse, the amygdala is enlarged (anger, reactivity) and the hypothalamus is shrunk (poor affective control, memory issues) - caused by too much cortisol for too long - the result is a volatile person living in flight/fight/freeze mode ALL of the time, much like those soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan - William Harryman