DANIEL BARENBOIM BRINGS MUSLIMS AND JEWS TOGETHER, THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”
Watch the legendary 75-year-old maestro Daniel Barenboim bring Muslims and Jews together in his West-East Divan Orchestra on the next edition of 60 MINUTES. Holly Williams reports on this Israeli conductor’s labor of love, peace and music Sunday, April 1 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN TYPE OF BRAIN INJURY CAUSED BY BLAST EXPOSURE COULD BE A PHYSICAL CAUSE OF PTSD IN COMBAT VETERANS, THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”
Doctors have found scar tissue in the brains of combat veterans who suffered from PTSD and were exposed to high explosive blast waves. The discovery could mean that many cases of PTSD, long thought to be a mostly psychological illness, may actually be caused by physical brain trauma. Scott Pelley reports on this medical breakthrough on the next edition of 60 MINUTES Sunday, April 1 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Pelley’s report focuses on deceased combat veteran Brian Mancini. Retired Sgt. 1st Class Mancini survived an IED explosion in Iraq and seemed to be recovering emotionally and physically after many surgeries. He even founded a center to help other veterans like himself deal with PTSD. But, almost suddenly, he became delusional and eventually committed suicide.
The transformation was so sudden and severe that his family thought there might be something doctors could see in his brain that could explain it. The Mancinis found neuropathologist Dr. Daniel Perl, who oversees the brain tissue repository at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.
Dr. Perl has examined several brains of combat veterans exposed to high explosive blasts who also suffered from PTSD. “When an IED goes off, there’s a tremendous explosion. And with the explosion comes the formation of something called the blast wave,” he tells Pelley. “And it is sufficiently powerful to pass through the skull and through the brain. And when it does that – it does damage the brain tissue.”
Dr. Perl shows Pelley the scarred tissue in the brain of a veteran exposed to a combat blast wave who also suffered from PTSD. He examined Mancini’s brain and found similar scarring. Asked whether he thinks he’ll be able to link the blast wave brain injury to PTSD, Dr. Perl replies, “In a sense, we already have. Every case that we’ve looked at has been diagnosed with PTSD. And what that connection is, whether the scarring in the brain leads one to be more apt to develop PTSD, or whether there’s so much overlap between the symptoms that one gets with the damage in the brain that it looks like PTSD, we don’t know yet.”
Dr. Perl is seeking the preserved brains of veterans of World War I, the war in which the use of high explosives became widespread, to further his study. In that war, the many veterans with symptoms that would be referred to today as PTSD were called victims of “shell shock.”
THIS SUNDAY ON “60 MINUTES”: CAN TECHNOLOGY UNRAVEL THE SECRETS SEALED BY MT. VESUVIUS 2,000 YEARS AGO?
Scholars Believe Seared Herculaneum Scrolls Could Contain Early Christian Writings
Like its renowned neighbor Pompeii, the ancient coastal town of Herculaneum was buried by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Yet the lesser-known site has yielded what could be the area’s greatest treasure: an ancient library of 1,800 papyrus scrolls, seared shut by the volcanic heat. Scholars believe the damaged scrolls could contain lost works of Greek philosophy or Roman poetry, or the first references to Jesus. Bill Whitaker goes to Italy to report on scientists’ efforts to read the scrolls noninvasively, using modern imaging technology. The story will be broadcast Sunday, April 1 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
“There’s no archeological site in the world that matches this,” says Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, founding director of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. While touring the ruins, Wallace-Hadrill tells Whitaker the volcano’s superheated surge, about 80 feet of ash and rock, was just the right temperature to preserve organic matter like furniture, food and the papyrus scrolls. “The paradox is that catastrophic destruction is also exceptionally good preservation,” says Wallace-Hadrill.
Among the sites locked in time was a palatial villa that may have belonged to the family of Julius Caesar. The villa’s library, which contained the scrolls, remained buried for centuries. In the 18th century, early excavators recovered the scrolls, tempting scholars to try to open them. “The history of the unwrapping of the Herculaneum scrolls is littered with failures,” says Brent Seales, a computer scientist from the University of Kentucky. “Everyone that had tried to open the scrolls left behind a hideous trail of fragmentary result.”
Now Seales and two Italian scientists are competing to be the first to read the scrolls without unrolling them. Whitaker reports this Sunday on their rivalry-fueled efforts to unravel the centuries old mystery of the Herculaneum scrolls.
“60 MINUTES” LISTINGS FOR SUNDAY, APRIL 1
MANCINI’S BRAIN – Scott Pelley reports on startling new discoveries about brain injuries suffered by combat veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scott Pelley reports. Henry Schuster is the producer.
SECOND ACT – The Israeli Conductor Daniel Barenboim brings Muslims and Jews together in his West-East Divan Orchestra – a labour of love, peace and music for the legendary 75-year-old maestro. Holly Williams reports. Michael H. Gavshon and David M. Levine are the producers.
THE SCROLLS OF HERCULANEUM – Bill Whitaker reports on efforts to unlock the secrets of some of the world’s oldest Western literature found in Herculaneum, an Italian city seared and buried by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. Marc Lieberman and Sabina Castelfranco are the producers.
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