Mapping Traumatic Brain Injuries

There's been an increasing amount of media attention to the topic of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) -bolstered in part by conversations surrounding the 2015 Hollywood blockbuster Concussion. The movie Concussion describes a particular phenomenon, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE, which occurs in the brain after repeated high impact blows to the head. The diagnosis of CTE requires examining brain tissue under a microscope after death, so it can't be diagnosed in living individuals. But in fact, there are many types of TBI, with concussion being the mildest (but most common) form. Today, brain mapping techniques are making it possible to identify TBI and track recovery. Physicians divide cases of TBI into three categories depending on severity: mild, moderate, and severe. Severity is determined by brain function, measured at the time of injury as reflected by a person's pupillary response, verbal response, and motor response. These findings can be summarized by the score on validated assessment tools such as the widely used Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). The lower the GCS score, the more severe the TBI. A closed-head injury (closed meaning no object penetrates the brain) results from a violent or sudden motion, such as whiplash in a car accident, which causes the brain to hit the skull. This is the most common form of moderate to severe TBI. Due to the violent motion, the brain experiences rapid acceleration and deceleration forces, causing shearing of white matter pathways ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news