Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, researchers at Mount Sinai have turned their attention not to what breaks the human mind under catastrophic trauma, but to what quietly sustains it. By scanning the brains of World Trade Center responders, scientists have identified a neurological signature in those who remained psychologically intact — a distinctive pattern in how the brain anticipates and processes positive experience. The finding suggests that resilience may be less a matter of character than of neural architecture, and that architecture, once understood, might be deliberate
Brain scans reveal resilience marker in 9/11 responders
Study examines long-term psychological impacts on 9/11 responders exposed to mass casualty trauma.