Protecting against brain injuries

Blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI) can lead to a range of debilitating conditions with lifelong consequences. It is a type of injury that has unfortunately seen a significant increase in recent terrorist attacks or conflicts such as in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, where improvised explosive devices have proved to have devastating effects on armed forces personnel and civilians.

While these conditions can clearly manifest themselves as neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders, the specific mechanisms that link the blast wave physics to the subsequent biological alterations in the brain have remained elusive.

Our research group seeks to understand the physical mechanisms governing brain tissue damage eventually leading to cognitive disorders, to develop better head protection against such blasts.

Through a unique collaboration with Prof. Shi from Purdue University in the US, our group has constructed computer models of rat and human brains to observe how a shockwave damages soft tissue, and how such damage correlates with post-injury oxidative stress distribution in brain tissues. In order to calibrate and validate these models, novel in vivo experiments coupling blast expositions to cognitive tests were conducted in Purdue.

This approach was then applied to a human head model where the prediction of cognitive impairments was shown to match up with the injuries that individuals have been observed to incur.