Archives of General Psychiatry 2009; 66(9): 996-1004.
Copyright (2009) American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
Marx, Brian P. PhD; Brailey, Kevin PhD; Proctor, Susan P., DSc; MacDonald, Helen Z. PhD; Graefe, Anna C. BA; Amoroso, Paul MD, MPH; Heeren, Timothy PhD; Vasterling, Jennifer J. PhD
Behavioral Sciences Division, Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD (Drs Marx, Brailey, MacDonald, and Vasterling and Ms Graefe); Psychology Service (Drs Marx, Brailey, MacDonald, and Vasterling) and Research Service (Dr Proctor), Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System; Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine (Drs Marx, Brailey, MacDonald, and Vasterling); and Departments of Environmental Health (Dr Proctor) and Biostatistics (Dr Heeren), Boston University School of Public Health, Boston; US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, Massachusetts (Dr Proctor); and Madigan Army Medical Center, Fort Lewis, Washington (Dr Amoroso).
Conclusions: In this study of army soldiers deployed to the Iraq war, only PTSD symptoms (among soldiers back from deployment for 1 year) were associated with a neuropsychological deficit (reduced attention). Greater combat intensity was associated with enhanced reaction time, irrespective of time since return.
Excerpt: To avoid multiplicity of outcomes and protect against type I error, analyses included only outcome measures of theoretical interest (i.e., those found to differentiate deployers from non-deployers in the previous report 6) (Table 1). These included residualized T3 values of the Neurobehavioral Evaluation System, third edition,32 Continuous Performance Task omissions (a sustained attention task requiring detection of targets from distracter stimuli); Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metric 33 scores (simple reaction-time throughput, a calculated measure of reaction-time efficiency, taking into account accuracy and response time); Wechsler Memory Scale, third edition,34 verbal paired associates I summary scores (requiring learning of unrelated word pairs); and Wechsler Memory Scale 35 visual reproductions percent retention (requiring reproduction of geometric designs from memory).