Head & Brain Injury Advice and Resources

Blog

Why are Two Concussions Close in Time so Damaging?

On 11/16/14  Zachary Weil and colleagues from Ohio State University  presented the answer to this question at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Dr. Weil shared his research on how mice respond to two concussions. After the first concussion the mouse brain ramps us its use of glucose to power repair

Read More

New 3D Model of the Human Brain Opens Research Windows

A team of neuroscientists in Germany led by Dr. Katrin Amunts has developed a new 3D model of the human brain. As announced on 7/16/13 the team took 7,400 super thin sections of the brain of a deceased 65 year old woman in excellent health and digitized them into a 3D model on

Read More

Damage to Areas Makes TBI Worse

How come people with traumatic brain injuries have such different neuropsychological outcomes — with some people gradually returning to normal (or near-normal) and others having very significant and permanent problems? For decades neurologist have used a measure of the severity of brain injury called the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) to predict outcomes. Although

Read More

First PET Scan to Detect Concussional Dementia in Living Patient

In September 2014 Dr. Samuel Gandy of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published a cases study in the journal Translational Psychiatry detailing the use of PET scanning with a radioactive tracer called [18 F]-T807 which can diagnose dementia from significant concussive damage in a living patient’s brain. The new technique

Read More

Xenon Gas Limits Brain Damage After TBI

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) from a car crash or fall is initially a mechanical process involving bruising of brain tissue. The worst damage from TBI comes hours/days later when a bio-chemical process of inflammation and cell death occurs. Scientists have been trying for decades to understand and halt this secondary process. One way

Read More

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Tracks Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury

On July 21. 2014, researchers from the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas published a study in the Journal of Neurotrauma, seeking to correlate the appearance of white matter damage from TBI with cognitive problems. Using the technique known as Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) the researchers found that as

Read More

Communication by Brain Waves Alone

Some victims of severe traumatic brain injury are unable to speak at all or speak unintelligibly. What if it were possible for them to wear a set of EEG headphones that recorded their internal thoughts in the form of EEG waves and transmitted their EEG waves via computer to another person? What if

Read More

Experimental Drug Gets Tested for Severe TBI

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati’s Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Critical Care, are now participating in a national clinical trial of an experimental drug to stop blood clot formation in victims of severe TBI. The drug known as Transexamic Acid (TXA) has the potential to save lives and improve outcomes.

Read More

New Book on Coping with Concussions and Mild TBI

Dr. Diane Stoler has published a comprehensive book on coping with concussions and mild traumatic brain injury with loads of helpful information. She is a board certified health psychologist and neuropsychologist. You can take a look at her book at www.drdiane.com

Read More

Implantable Neural Interface Device for Healing TBI

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has just awarded $5.6 million to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop an electronic device that can be implanted in the brains of injured soldiers who sustained a TBI, PTSD or both. The device (called a neural interface) will have multiple electrodes sealed in a bio-compatible

Read More