Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology 22S (2007), S7-S14
Karl E. Friedl, Stephen J. Grate, Susan P. Proctor, James W. Ness, Brian J. Lukey, Robert L. Kane
U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, MA 01760-5007, United States
Military Operational Medicine Research Program, Fort Detrick, MD 21702-5012, United States
Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02215, United States
VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA 02130, United States
Department of Behavioral Biology, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY 10996, United States
VA Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States
Abstract: Information on the mental status of soldiers operating at the limits of human tolerance will be vital to their management in future deployments; it may also allow earlier intervention for conditions such as undiagnosed Gulf War illnesses and Parkinson’s Disease. The Army needs a parsimonious set of neuropsychological tests that reliably identify subtle changes for: (1) early detection of individual health and military performance impairments and (2) management of occupational and deployment health risks. Testing must characterize cognitive lapses in healthy individuals faced with relevant operational stressors (i.e., anxiety, information overload, thermal strain, hypoxia, fatigue, head impact, chemical or radiation exposures, and metabolic challenges). This effort must also explore the neuropsychological methods in militarily relevant conditions to extend our understanding of relevant functional domains and how well they correspond to modes of testing. The ultimate objective is unobtrusive real-time mental status monitoring.
Excerpt: More recently, ANAM has been used to assess effects of injury and disease states (e.g., head injury, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease). While different ANAM measures have been employed, there has been sufficient consistency to potentially shed light on anatomical and functional changes that can contribute to our understanding of less dramatic but important changes in healthy humans under stress. The thread that ties these issues together is the need of the military for a sensitive and consistent approach for measuring crucial changes in human performance.