The Effect of the Sulcus Morphology on the Transduction of Impacts to the Brain

Author(s):  
Parisa Saboori ◽  
Ali Sadegh

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.

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (05) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Davis ◽  
Danielle Henry

The human brain is a very powerful tool. It allows us to see, remember, understand, and learn. With new technologies being discovered every day, scientists are able to discover how people acquire, process, and store information. New technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) allow scientist understand how the brain reacts to a particular stimulus or how brain structure can affect a person’s health and personality. The brain and nervous system works hand-in-hand and coexist in order to function everyday life. The study of the function and structure of the nervous system is neuroanatomy. These nerves work together to receive and send messages from the central nervous system to the rest of the body. The messages travels almost instantly to any part of the body within seconds. Brain communication and function correlates to the ability to do work with information. This includes cognitive thinking and behavior. The cognition aspect of the brain involves the intellect and learning ability of the brain. On the other hand, the behavior aspect of the brain involves the emotional ability of the brain. The cognitive and behavioral aspects are not just singled out to humans with normal, operable abilities. These aspects stretch as far as aging in dogs, people who suffer with depression and cannot cope with proper thinking, people who have suffered from traumatic brain injuries, and those who suffer with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Tanios ◽  
Sarah Al-Halabi ◽  
Hiba Hasan ◽  
Samar Abdelhady ◽  
John Saliba ◽  
...  

If the brain is injured due to traumatic brain injury (TBI), it will lose some of its cells. If our brain cells get damaged, we may be left with problems controlling our movement, our speech, or even our memory! In the future, tissue engineering may be able to help people with TBI. Tissue engineering involves building a piece of tissue outside of the body or assisting the damaged part of a tissue to grow again and function inside the body. Cells are the building blocks of the body, and they are surrounded by a matrix that supports them. This matrix is called the extracellular matrix (ECM). Scientists can make artificial mimics of the natural ECM. The artificial ECM helps a damaged tissue to regenerate. In this article, we discuss how Gel-MA, an artificial ECM, can have healing properties in injured brains.


Author(s):  
Parisa Saboori ◽  
Ali Sadegh

Human brain is suspended in the skull through three fibrous tissue layers, dura mater, arachnoid and pia mater, known as the meninges layer. The space between the arachnoid and pia mater is known as subarachnoid space (SAS). SAS consists of arachnoid trabeculae and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which stabilizes the shape and the position of the brain during head movements. Through solid-fluid interaction, it has been shown that subarachnoid space (SAS) trabeculae plays an important role in damping and reducing the relative movement of the brain with respect to the skull, thereby reducing traumatic brain injuries (TBI), (Zoghi and Sadegh 2010). While the functionality of the SAS is understood, the architecture, the histology and biomechanics of this important region has not been fully investigated. In their modeling of the head, previous investigators have over simplified this important region. This is due to the trabeculae’s complex geometry, abundance of trabeculae and lack of the material properties. These simplifications could lead to inaccurate results of finite element head studies. Killer HE, et al, (2003) investigated the trabecular histology of optical nerves and Alcoldo, et al (1986) used Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to study the arachnid mater of the SAS. The result of these studies reveal that the arachnoid is a thin vascular layer composed of fibroblast cells interspersed with bundles of collagen and the trabecula is also a collagen based structure. However, the brain SAS trabecular architecture and histology has not been fully investigated. The goal of this study is to investigate the mechanotransduction of the head impacts to the brain with the emphasis on the role of material modeling and architecture of the subarachnoid space as it relates to Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). This goal was accomplished through three aims including experimental studies, material modeling and a 3D finite element model. In this paper, to present a global view of this investigation, brief descriptions of each aim are presented. It was concluded that the trabeculae contain collagen Type I with tree-shaped architecture and the validated material properties of SAS is approximately E = 1000 Pa.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-66
Author(s):  
Bal G Karmacharya ◽  
Brijesh Sathian

The objective of this study was to review the demographics, causes injury, severity, treatment and outcome of traumatic brain injuries in victims of the April 2015 earthquake who were admitted in Manipal Teaching Hospital, Pokhara. A total of 37 patients was admitted under Neurosurgery Services. Collapse of buildings was the commonest cause of head injury. The majority of them had mild head injury. Associated injuries to other parts of the body were present in 40.54% patients.Nepal Journal of Neuroscience 12:63-66, 2015


Author(s):  
M. S. Chafi ◽  
V. Dirisala ◽  
G. Karami ◽  
M. Ziejewski

In the central nervous system, the subarachnoid space is the interval between the arachnoid membrane and the pia mater. It is filled with a clear, watery liquid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). The CSF buffers the brain against mechanical shocks and creates buoyancy to protect it from the forces of gravity. The relative motion of the brain due to a simultaneous loading is caused because the skull and brain have different densities and the CSF surrounds the brain. The impact experiments are usually carried out on cadavers with no CSF included because of the autolysis. Even in the cadaveric head impact experiments by Hardy et al. [1], where the specimens are repressurized using artificial CSF, this is not known how far this can replicate the real functionality of CSF. With such motivation, a special interest lies on how to model this feature in a finite element (FE) modeling of the human head because it is questionable if one uses in vivo CSF properties (i.e. bulk modulus of 2.19 GPa) to validate a FE human head against cadaveric experimental data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Brady Armitage ◽  
B. Sue Graves

Sports medicine advancements are continuously evolving allowing professionals to utilize tools to provide for their athletes’ care. These tools have allowed clinicians to better diagnose and determine the extent of an athlete’s injury. Over the last 20 years, an emphasis has been placed on mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) and/or concussions. This focus on mTBI and concussions has led to an understanding of the mechanism of injury (MOI), development of grading/severity scales of injury, and diagnostic tools for properly assessing an athlete suffering from an injury to the brain. Clinicians understanding of concussion has excelled in recent years, but with advancement in technologies and diagnostic tools, all professionals need to understand the importance of incorporating tools into the diagnostic procedure. Thus, the purpose of this review is to evaluate common tools in practice, as well as newer tools, that could be utilized by sports medicine professionals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Surjo Soekadar ◽  
Jennifer Chandler ◽  
Marcello Ienca ◽  
Christoph Bublitz

Recent advances in neurotechnology allow for an increasingly tight integration of the human brain and mind with artificial cognitive systems, blending persons with technologies and creating an assemblage that we call a hybrid mind. In some ways the mind has always been a hybrid, emerging from the interaction of biology, culture (including technological artifacts) and the natural environment. However, with the emergence of neurotechnologies enabling bidirectional flows of information between the brain and AI-enabled devices, integrated into mutually adaptive assemblages, we have arrived at a point where the specific examination of this new instantiation of the hybrid mind is essential. Among the critical questions raised by this development are the effects of these devices on the user’s perception of the self, and on the user’s experience of their own mental contents. Questions arise related to the boundaries of the mind and body and whether the hardware and software that are functionally integrated with the body and mind are to be viewed as parts of the person or separate artifacts subject to different legal treatment. Other questions relate to how to attribute responsibility for actions taken as a result of the operations of a hybrid mind, as well as how to settle questions of the privacy and security of information generated and retained within a hybrid mind.


2020 ◽  
pp. 96-122
Author(s):  
David Musnick ◽  
Shae Datta

Millions of Americans suffer from traumatic brain injuries and concussion each year. It used to be thought that recovery from a noncomplicated concussion was quick and easy. However, recent research has shown that multiple physiological mechanisms may result from a single impact to the head, and worsen with subsequent injuries. Head injuries have been shown to affect different systems of the body, including the endocrine system, the immune system, and maintenance of the gastrointestinal microbiome. This chapter will review these mechanisms, the sequelae of head injury, and the importance of conducting a thorough evaluation. Integrative methods of treatment and management will be discussed.


Author(s):  
Michael Trimble

This chapter discusses the clinical necessity from which the intersection of neurology and psychiatry arose, exploring different eras and their associated intellectual milestones in order to understand the historical framework of contemporary neuropsychiatry. Identifying Hippocrates’ original acknowledgement of the relation of the human brain to epilepsy as a start point, the historical development of the field is traced. This encompasses Thomas Willis and his nascent descriptions of the limbic system, the philosophical and alchemical strides of the Enlightenment, and the motivations behind the Romantic era attempts to understand the brain. It then follows the growth of the field through the turn of the twentieth century, in spite of the prominence of psychoanalysis and the idea of the brainless mind, and finally the understanding of the ‘integrated action’ of the body and nervous system, which led to the integration of psychiatry and neurology, allowing for the first neuropsychiatric examinations of epilepsy.


2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Rosse ◽  
J. F. Brinkley

Summary Objectives: Survey current work primarily funded by the US Human Brain Project (HBP) that involves substantial use of images. Organize this work around a framework based on the physical organization of the body. Methods: Pointers to individual research efforts were obtained through the HBP home page as well as personal contacts from HBP annual meetings. References from these sources were followed to find closely related work. The individual research efforts were then studied and characterized. Results: The subject of the review is the intersection of neuroinformatics (information about the brain), imaging informatics (information about images), and structural informatics (information about the physical structure of the body). Of the 30 funded projects currently listed on the HBP web site, at least 22 make heavy use of images. These projects are described in terms of broad categories of structural imaging, functional imaging, and image-based brain information systems. Conclusions: Understanding the most complex entity known (the brain) gives rise to many interesting and difficult problems in informatics and computer science. Although much progress has been made by HBP and other neuroinformatics researchers, a great many problems remain that will require substantial informatics research efforts. Thus, the HPB can and should be seen as an excellent driving application area for biomedical informatics research.


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