UC Berkeley

TBI is the leading cause of disability, chronic disease, and death among the under-40 age group in the developed world. From 2002-2006, the reported incidence of TBI in the United States was almost 600 per 100,000 persons according to the CDC. Up to 80% of these injuries involve closed-head, blunt-force impacts (CDC), however many of our animal models involve open-head injury techniques. Recent models have moved to inducing an injury with a weight-drop device allowing unrestricted motion of the head following impact. This mimics head injuries seen in sports and motor vehicle accidents more accurately, but also leads to variation in the injury induction itself. The added motion of these models requires quantification of mechanical variation in the animal's head motion post-impact to determine how much mechanical forces play a role in injury outcomes compared to physiological injury mechanisms. Using a high-speed video capture system and tracking software, a technique was developed to analyze the kinematics of animal head motion immediately post impact. Those kinematic variables can be compared to behavioral test data to determine the effects of mechanical forces on this type of injury. The development of this technique also led to the construction and development of a gait analysis system that can give increased resolution to motor deficits experienced by animals post-injury. These types of methods work towards bridging our understanding of the brain’s mechanical response to loading and our knowledge of the physiological mechanisms that underlie damage to the tissue itself into mechanical modeling of clinically relevant functional measures. This research is a step towards merging the fields of engineering and neuroscience to take on one of the most complex issues in medicine: traumatic brain injury.