Doctors examining U.S. Embassy victims of alleged attacks in Cuba have identified brain abnormalities as they try to find clues to explain hearing and memory loss.
This is the most concrete finding to date about physical damage, indicating that visible changes in the American’s brains were caused by whatever it was that harmed them. The finding also fueled beliefs that some type of sonic weapon was involved in the alleged attack.
A number of U.S. officials said that the embassy workers suffered changes to white matter tracts that allow the exchange of information, which more and more physicians researching the attacks agree was the case.
Investigators suspected that the embassy workers had come under “sonic attacks,” due to mysterious sounds which led the staff to experience hearing loss. However, officials are now trying to avoid using the term, saying that the sounds may have been the byproduct of something else that caused damage.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson expressed certainty that the incidents in Cuba were “targeted attacks” on U.S. Embassy workers, The Associated Press reports.
Doctors still don’t know how victims ended up with the white matter changes, nor how exactly those changes might relate to their symptoms. U.S. officials didn’t say if all 24 victims experienced the changes. Elisa Konofagou from the Columbia University said acoustic waves have never been proven to change white matter tracts.
“I would be very surprised,” she said, referring to the fact that ultrasound in the brain, which is largely used in modern medicine, has never led to white matter tract problems.
Cuba has repeatedly denied involvement, calling the Trump administration’s claims that U.S. workers were attacked “deliberate lies.”
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