When U.S. Marine Sam Johnson was on patrol in Iraq, he and his team came across a pressure plate IED.

It hit the front of his vehicle.

Fortunately, everyone survived the traumatic experience. Sam sustained some injuries to his knees, but after a number of surgeries, he was able to recover physically. “I feel good,” he said. “Now I can walk downstairs without too much pain.”

But as he transitioned out of the military, the next big hurdle was finding a new job one that he would find as fulfilling as his last.

“I knew I wanted to have a great job,” he said, so he turned to DAV (Disabled American Veterans), a nonprofit charity with the mission of providing a lifetime of support for disabled veterans who have made sacrifices for their country. They were holding a job fair in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Often what can be most terrifying for vets is what comes after their service.

Posted by Upworthy on Wednesday, May 24, 2017

DAV was founded after World War I, a war in which more than 4.7 million Americans served.

At the time, the country wasnt prepared to deal with the enormous scale of so many newly returned veterans, and it certainly wasnt prepared to help the 204,000 vets who had been wounded or injured during this brutal conflict.

These men needed jobs, access to medical care, and other forms of support, and there was no single government agency like todays Department of Veterans Affairs.

So groups of veterans with disabilities started gathering together all across the country to help fill that void, raise money for those who needed it, and create jobs for other veterans. Slowly a new organization began to take shape: the Disabled American Veterans of the World War. In September 1920, the organization held its first national caucus, attended by 250 disabled veterans. From there, the organization kept growing.

Of course, a lot has changed over the last century since the DAV was founded. But the organization has never wavered from its core mission: helping veterans and their families get access to the resources and tools they need as they transition back to civilian life.

Today, DAV has more than 1,300 chapters and 1.3 million members across the United States.

Every year, they help 1 million veterans such as Sam with everything from health care and benefits to rides to medical appointments and other issues as they arise.

They also represent the interests of veterans on Capitol Hill, engage with the public, and, of course, hold job fairs like the one Sam attended in Charlotte where he landed his current job a career he is very proud of.

He said, “It gave me the opportunity to interview with these companies and land a job making this world a better place.”

Read more: http://www.upworthy.com/america-wasnt-prepared-for-so-many-returning-vets-after-wwi-so-it-created-dav

Psychologists have always been fascinated as to why some people believe in a higher being, while others are happy to accept that we are alone in life.Now researchers claimthey have found a region of the brain that, when damaged, may increase the likelihood that a person will hold fundamental religious beliefs. In particular, they found that damage to this regionreduced cognitive flexibility the ability to challenge ones preexisting beliefs when presented with new evidence.

The research builds on previous work that has found a neurological underpinning for religion, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. Thestudy, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, utilized a data set that was initially started to study Vietnam War veterans who had experienced trauma. Using this registry, the team compared soldiers who had received penetrating brain injury with veterans who had not.

They looked at 119 combat veterans with brain damage to their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. They found that among those studied, the veterans with damage to this region of the brain, which has been linked to planning and problem solving, were less open to new ideas. Thismay help explain why they were more likely to be fundamental in their religious beliefs.

For the study, theygave the participants tests to see how cognitively flexible they were and placed them on a standardized measure to assesstheir level of religious fundamentalism. They then took CTscans to measure the size and locationof the brain lesions in the veterans. It turned out that those who had received trauma to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region found at the front of the brain, were more likely to hold fundamental beliefs and were less likely to be cognitively flexible.

These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on [dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] functionality, write the authors.

Previous experiments have found that this part of the brain is involved in working memory, in which you hold in mind multiple pieces of information you have just learned. It has also been shown to be key to cognitive flexibility. This latest study, the researchers suggests, shows that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex may also be crucial in helping us remain open about new ideas that may challenge deeply held beliefs.

This does not mean that forming a religious belief is down to some form of brain damage, or that trauma to the head will therefore lead to fundamentalism. The researchers simply state that damage to this particular part of the brain may make it more difficult for a person to assess their own deep-seated beliefs when presented with new evidence.

Read more: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/damage-to-specific-site-in-the-brain-may-be-linked-to-religious-fundamentalism/