Body
The William F. Caveness Vietnam Head Injury Study (VHIS) is a long-term follow up study of a cohort of 1,221 Vietnam War veterans who sustained mostly penetrating brain injuries (pTBI). The study was divided into four phases of data collection, spanning almost 50 years. At each phase a broad battery of tests was administered examining a myriad of outcomes. While post-traumatic epilepsy, movement, and fatigue were key topics of interest in earlier phases, later phases placed a greater focus on higher level cognitive outcomes and genetics. Such cognitive outcomes include everything from executive function and social cognition to religious belief and theory of mind. Around 150 VHIS papers have been published to date, and we are currently using VHIS data to identify the neural underpinnings of everyday behaviors. We are one of the few labs in the world to use the Analysis of Brain Lesions (ABLe) software to assist with voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM).