Cuba ‘sonic attacks’ changed US diplomats’ brains, study finds

The brains of 40 former staffers at the US Embassy in Cuba who developed mysterious symptoms during so-called “sonic attacks” have visible differences compared to a control group, according to a new study.

The State Department has said the employees developed what became known as “Havana Syndrome” – headaches, dizziness, nausea and other symptoms that arose when they heard penetrating, high-pitched sounds.

MRI scans from the 23 men and 17 women showed changes in brain structure and functional connectivity between different parts of the organ compared with 48 other adults, according to the study by the University of Pennsylvania.

The difference in the brains between the two groups “is pretty jaw-dropping at the moment,” lead researcher Dr. Ragini Verma, a professor of radiology at Penn, told Reuters.

“Most of these patients had a particular type of symptoms and there is a clinical abnormality that is being reflected in an imaging anomaly,” she said.

However, in findings published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, Verma and her team said it was unclear if the brain patterns directly translate into significant health problems.

Initial MRI scans of 21 embassy workers in Havana had revealed no abnormalities.

The diplomats’ health problems surfaced in 2016 after the Obama administration reopened the embassy in an effort to improve relations with Cuba.

Most of the employees were removed from the Communist island nation in 2017.

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