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Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Brain

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Just last week President Obama announced a pledge of $100 million to a federal brain mapping initiative. It will hopefully zero in on improving care for those with PTSD, traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. John Hart Jr. is the Medical Science Director at the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas, Dallas. His team is working on links between concussion and depression as well as better therapy for veterans with PTSD. In this week’s “Vital Signs,” Dr. Hart weighs in on the mapping program and what it means for patients everywhere.

With regard to the federal brain mapping initiative, here's what Dr. Hart had to say about his hope for what it could mean for patient care.

“Since I started doing this, the hardest part of the job is sitting down with a family of any age and they look you in the face and they look in your eyes and say, what’s this mean for my son, what’s this mean for my dad, what’s going to happen? So I think that part of this mapping issue is when you look at when people are impaired, we get better information to give to families and patients so they’re armed with it.”

Learn more about the UTD Center for Brain Health including information on upcoming studies and special events.

Read Dr. Hart's extended biography here.

The NFL wrote an article about Dr. Hart's research on the link between concussion and depression. Read the complete piece here.

Courtney Collins has been working as a broadcast journalist since graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2004. Before coming to KERA in 2011, Courtney worked as a reporter for NPR member station WAMU in Washington D.C. While there she covered daily news and reported for the station’s weekly news magazine, Metro Connection.