Memory impairment exhibited by veterans with Gulf War Illness
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Updated: May 23, 2026

System for Focal, Closed-System Central Nervous System Injury
Published on: November 29, 2024
Timothy N Odegard1, Crystal M Cooper, Emily A Farris
1Department of Psychology, University Texas Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019-0528, USA. odegard@uta.edu
Abstract:
Roughly 26-32% of US veterans, who served in the first Gulf War, report suffering from chronic health problems ( Golomb, 2008 , Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, 105, 4295). The present study investigated the memory deficits reported by these ill Gulf War veterans (GWV) using a face-name associative memory paradigm administered during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data confirmed memory performance on the memory task to be related to the amount of activation in the left hippocampus observed during the study. In addition, ill-GWV demonstrated decreased memory performance relative to unaffected GWV on this memory test, providing evidence of memory deficits using an objective measure of memory.
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