Exploring the Natural History of Traumatic Brain Injury within a Military Cohort

The purpose of this study is to improve our understanding of traumatic brain injury (TBI) within a military cohort by developing a database that contains participant interview data, neurobehavioral data, neurocognitive data, neuroimaging data, sensory/motor data, and blood specimen data from service members categorized into three groups: (a) those who have sustained a mild, moderate, or severe TBI (b) those who have sustained a non-TBI related injury such as an orthopedic or soft-tissue injury (injured non-TBI trauma controls), or (c) are those who are injury free (non-injured controls). The data collected will provide the foundation for the development if hypothesis-driven protocols, and will ultimately advance our understanding of the body's pathophysiological response to TBI and those contextual, social, emotional, and environmental factors that have an impact on outcomes in a military population. This study is a prospective database and blood banking study designed to collect pathophysiologic information on three cohorts of service members: (a) those who have sustained a mild, moderate, or severe TBI, (b) those who have sustained a non-objective of this study is to improve our understanding of traumatic brain injury in a military cohort by developing a data repository that contains pertinent TBI-related information, including participant interview data, neurobehavioral data, neurocognitive data, neuroimaging data, sensory/motor data, and blood specimen data. Additional aims of the study are to: 1) Establish the framework necessary to compare outcomes observed in a military cohort to outcomes observed in a civilian cohort. 2) Document long term participant outcomes over fifteen years. 3) Follow the Congressional FY2007 National Defense Authorization Act, which requires a 15-year longitudinal study of service members who sustained a TBI. Congress stipulated that the study focus on the following areas: long-term physical and mental health outcomes; health care, mental health care, and rehabilitation needs; the availability of long-term care and rehabilitation programs; and the effects on the families of service members with TBI. The present study will address a portion of these required initiatives, with the goal of advancing the state of the science of TBI assessment and outcome measurement, this longitudinal study will generate data that will help inform policy makes on the medical and supportive care needs of service members returning from OIF/OEF.