The Effect of the Sulcus Morphology on the Transduction of Impacts to the Brain
The human head, being a vulnerable body region, is most frequently involved in traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and life threatening injuries. Accurate modeling of the variability of the brain morphology is a fundamental problem in investigating TBI. Improved computational/mathematical structural models of the brain are needed to help investigators to have a better understanding of the phenomena of different traumatic brain injuries such as concussion. The human brain is the most complex region of the body. There is a very thin membrane known as a pia mater that covers all the surface of the brain. The pia mater follows all the fissure of the brain and covers all the surface of the sulci and gyri. Sulcus is referred to any furrow in the brain. Statistically there are about 72 main sulci in the human brain. Previous FE studies of TBI have ignored sulcus morphology in their modeling and thus, their results could be unreliable. In this paper, the effect of the brain sulcus structure on mechanotransduction of impacts to the brain has been investigated. This was accomplished by using series of parametric studies and comparing the results with the model without sulci. The results of this study reveal that the brain’s strain is reduced in the present of sulcus and gyrus structures. We have hypothesized that the presence of sulcus increases the surface area of the brain thereby decreases the normal and shear strain in the brain. That is, the presence of sulcus and gyrus reduce the transduction of the external load and impacts to the white and gray matters of the brain and thereby reduces the risk of TBI. Ignoring sulci in any FE modeling and analysis of the brain may lead to unreliable results.