Collaborative Research

The Home Base Program Research component works to expand the understanding of deployment- and combat-related stress and TBI and identify new and better ways to diagnose and treat patients with these complicated disorders. Currently more than 80 research studies that focus on various aspects of deployment- and combat-related stress and TBI are under way at the MGH, including collaborative efforts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense as well as with other academic medical centers.

 

Current studies

The Home Base Program combines various research efforts to collect and synthesize the expertise, knowledge and perspectives from scientists in various fields. Here is just a sampling of the studies currently underway:

• Preventing or reducing deployment- and combat-related stress by administering a drug called propranolol to patients shortly after a psychologically traumatic event.
  
  
• Using specific medications to influence and weaken traumatic memories when they are reactivated in patients with deployment- and combat-related stress.
  
  
• Improving the understanding of deployment- and combat-related stress and TBI by closely monitoring the blood flow in the brains of patients with the disorders through sophisticated brain imaging techniques.
  
  
• Evaluating the potential benefits of a technique called galvanic vestibular stimulation to improve the attention deficits associated with TBI, which could lead to greater success in physical rehabilitation therapies.
  
  
• Studying how brain regions involved in the processing of stress and reward function differently in those deployment- and combat-related stress patients who have responded to serotonin-dopamine treatment (which normalizes the brain’s reward-motivational circuits) compared with those who have not responded to this treatment.
  
  
• Investigating the value of a clinical assessment called “neurological soft sign” (NSS) examination as a way to discriminate post-concussive disorder from post-traumatic stress disorder, which would reduce misdiagnoses and facilitate more timely and appropriate treatments.
  
  
• Exploring novel techniques such as lasers and ultrasound as treatments for TBI.
  
  

Mark Pollack, MD

Director, Traumatic Stress Disorders Research Program

Mark Pollack, MD, serves as director of the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders at Massachusetts General Hospital and is a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His clinical and research focus includes the course, pathophysiology and treatment of patients with anxiety disorders, including deployment- and combat-related stress and associated co-morbidities; development of novel pharmacologic agents for mood and anxiety disorders; uses of combined cognitive-behavioral and pharmacologic therapies treatment strategies; presentation and treatment of anxiety in the medical setting; and the pathophysiology and treatment of substance abuse. He serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards, and is on the Board of Directors of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

Ross D. Zafonte, DO

TBI Research Program Leader

Ross D. Zafonte, DO, is the Earle P. and Ida S. Charlton Chairman of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School, vice president of Medical Affairs at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and chief of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Ross has published extensively on traumatic brain injuries, other neurological disorders, as well as presented on these topics at conferences nationally and internationally. Dr Zafonte’s textbook is considered one of the standards in the field of brain injury care.

Dr. Zafonte is currently the PI on an eight-center NIH multisite clinical trial for the treatment of TBI – the largest clinical treatment trial in the history of North America. Dr Zafonte has helped to direct a tremendous growth in both the rehabilitation research and clinical arenas at Spaulding and the MGH. Specific areas of success include the awarding of a Department of Defense TBI/deployment- and combat-related stress center grant, numerous NIH- and NIDRR-funded projects, enhanced relationships with the Department of Veterans Affairs, the development of a gait laboratory focused on novel prosthetic design for those with amputation, and a neuroprosthetic program making “science fiction” come alive.

Terence M. Keane, PhD

VA Coordinator

Dr. Keane, Associate Chief of Staff for Research & Development, VA Boston Healthcare System, is a professor and vice-chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, and is also recognized as a world leader in the field of traumatic stress. He developed many of the most widely used deployment- and combat-related stress assessment measures and is considered an authority on the cognitive behavioral treatment of deployment- and combat-related stress.

Dr. Keane has participated in many scientific review panels and was co-chair of the National Institute of Mental Health Consensus Conference that established national standards for the diagnosis and assessment of deployment- and combat-related stress. His research has been continuously funded for 29 years and he's published over 230 books, papers, and chapters. He is a past president of ISTSS and a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, and he has received many awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship, Binghamton University's Weisband Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy's Outstanding Researcher Award, the Robert J. Laufer Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (1997) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) from the ISTSS.