As the survivor of a traumatic brain injury and his or her friends and family struggle to comes to terms with what has happened and what the future holds, many questions are raised. It’s helpful if both the survivor and his or her family have some general information about traumatic brain injury at this time.

Population Affected By Traumatic Brain Injury

Approximately 1.4 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury each year, and of these, 1.1 million are treated and released from the hospital, 235,000 are hospitalized, and 50,000 die.

The leading cause of brain injury is falls among those between the ages of 0 and 4, and those over the age of 75. Other common causes of traumatic brain injury are motor vehicle accidents, being struck by or struck against a moving or stationary object, and assaults and other physical violence. Motor vehicle accidents is the cause most likely to result in hospitalization.

Signs and Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury

The most common signs of traumatic brain injury are:

• Headaches and neck pain
• Difficulty remembering or concentrating
• Issues with thinking, speaking, acting, or reading
• Fatigue, lack of energy, and decreased motivation
• Changes in sleep patterns
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Nausea and vomiting
• Blurred vision
• Increased sensitivity to noise, lights, or distractions
• Loss of the senses, such as smell or taste

Long-term Outcome of Traumatic Brain Injury

According to the Center for Disease Control about 5.3 percent of Americans—that’s two percent of the U.S population—need help performing everyday activities as a result of traumatic brain injury. Traumatic brain injury frequently causes issues that can affect thinking, emotions, sensation, and language. Seizures that result from traumatic brain injury can cause age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

This week’s technology report isn’t on something you can use - yet. ScienceDaily reports that a team at the University of Reading has created a robot that is controlled by an actual biological brain. This has a great deal of potential applications as it continues to develop and become more complex.

Using cultured neurons, the scientists developed this brain in a move to determine how memories manifest and how the brain “stores specific pieces of data”. The neurons are placed into a dish called a multi-electrode array (MEA) that has 60 electrodes which pick up the electrical signals sent by the cells. These signals are what determine how the robot moves.

As researchers figure out how to get the robot to learn, they hope to be able to watch the actual process of how memories manifest themselves when the robot travels over known territory.

Knowing more about how memory forms will help researchers understand how memory is damaged in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and eventually, how to repair it!

To keep an eye on this research, visit the University of Reading.

Due to the U.S.’s continued military presence in Iraq, we have seen a lot of attention paid to the increasing numbers of soldiers returning with head injuries from bomb blasts. These injuries are often hard to detect and too many times go unreported.

Luckily, both for the soldiers and for civilians who have sustained brain injuries, there has been a correlating increase in research into preventing and curing traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

The latest study that has caught our attention is focused on the use of crystals to detect and report a TBI. Shu Yang, one of the researchers who developed the device, says that the amount of damage sustained from an impact such as a soldier would get from an explosion, can be registered by crystals.

The crystal structure changes depending on the level of shock it experiences, changing its color. Scientists are working on developing a method that will allow doctors to translate a particular color into a level of neurological damage.

According to a NewScientist article, the blast waves from large roadside bombs “stretch and shear the brain, damaging the long nerve cells connecting the different regions of the brain”. The damage can only be detected with a specialized MRI scan, until now. With these crystal stickers, the hope is that the degree of damage will be apparent with a quick visual check, allowing the necessary level of care to be ascertained immediately.

When attached to a uniform or helmet in the form of a think sticker strip, these crystals can potentially be incredibly useful on the battlefield, helping to bring more of our soldiers home after receiving proper and beneficial TBI care.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University are helping U.S. soldiers with early detection and timely treatment of traumatic brain injuries.

A prototype software has been designed to “integrate in real time data provided by medics on the battlefield with information from the patient’s electronic medical record, filter them through a template and present a visualization over a network to a physician in a remote location who could then diagnose TBI and direct treatment.”

This means that a soldier who is injured in some remote location like Iraq can have the needed brain injury information ready and waiting to put into play once the patient arrives.

This system uses data such as the injured soldier’s heart rate, respiration rate and blood pressure that is added to the patient’s medical history to determine the degree of the injury and the next needed step.

As traumatic brain injuries need to be treated as soon as possible, this software’s ability to “visually transfer the physician to the battle” will greatly increase a soldier’s chance of survival and recovery after sustaining a TBI.

It’s has to be incredibly difficult to be faced with the choice of ending the life of a non-responsive brain injury patient. As a parent, spouse, sibling or child, this choice can’t get any easier.

Now, with new information on the brain activity in patients who have been diagnosed as being vegetative, this decision has gotten even harder.

Niels Birbaumer, a neurobiologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany, found surprising levels of cortical activity after studying EEG recordings of the brain activity in vegetative patients. The cerebral cortex is the area of the brain associated with memory, attention, awareness, thought and language.

Since the vegetative state was first labeled and defined, there has been a great deal of argument among everyone from scientists to lawyers and family members over the point where it’s OK to finally make the decision to end a life. This has been so difficult due to the varying concepts of what determines that someone is “alive”.

If they are breathing and the body is able to sustain itself on IV-fed nutrition, does this mean the person is still living? If they have no response to verbal communication or physical stimulation, does this mean they are no longer conscious and hence no longer “with us”? Because of this blurry line, scientists have been working to find a definite way to determine “true” brain death.

Birbaumer’s EEG recordings are an example of the recent studies to clarify this difficult matter. In one, Birbaumer and colleagues looked for patterns in the brain’s electrical activity as patients with severe brain damage had sentences read to them. The patients ranged from completely vegetative to those who could still control their gaze or other physical abilities.

Of the 38 participants that were labeled persistently vegetative, a state that is usually considered irreversible, 22 percent responded to errors that were deliberately mixed in with the sentences. This suggests that these patients are able to process more than was previously assumed and creates further questions on what a person who is in a vegetative state is aware of internally, if unable to respond externally.

Hopefully studies such as this one will help doctors to determine if someone is truly non-functioning and unable to have any awareness of their surroundings. This would make it easier for those whose trial it is to make and end-of-life decision.

This week’s technology spotlight is on an interesting assistive device called a cerebral interface or brain-computer interface (BCI).

The BCI enables users to augment their ability to communicate. Created by Carmen Vidaurre Arbizu, the BCI interfaces with the user’s computer and electroencephalograms (EEG) to generate signals used for communication.

In only four hours of of training, the typical user was able to control the interface. If you are interested in using your mind to control your computer, this device is worth checking out! Perhaps a peek into the future of assistive technology, the BCI brings us a big step closer to easy communication.

According to a recent Newswise article, the University of Washington’s Computer Science & Engineering department is working on personalizing computer interfaces based on an individual’s needs. This will take into account your disability and the limitations it imposes, unlike the pre-made devices you buy in the store.

In order to make sure you are properly matched to your computer, the university will administer a skills test that then allows them to generate a mathematical model geared towards your needs. An optimization program will then figure out how long it will take you to finish applicable tasks, measuring your accuracy and speed.

This program, named Supple, will be able to help people with limitations ranging from paralysis to poor eyesight. The creators see this application starting as a Web-based program that will eventually adapt to traditional interfaces.

Currently, the majority of technologies are made to help you adapt, not the other way around. You can buy arm supports, adaptive computer desks and stools, stands for your paperwork, specially designed mice and many other products created to make your computer access easier. Imagine doing away with all of these extra accessories and instead logging directly into a computer that is geared to help you without assistance. A nice idea and one we fully support!

Using a type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) called diffusion spectrum imaging to study the brains of five healthy individuals, Swiss and American researchers have drawn up the first high resolution map of connections in the brain.

Understanding communication between neurons in the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain responsible for reasoning and planning, can help researchers understand what is affected in a traumatic brain injury. By having a map of a “healthy” brain to compare an injured one to, the potential for healing these damaged areas increases greatly.

Olaf Sporns, co-author of the study, says that this map allows them to “measure a significant correlation between brain anatomy and brain dynamics,” meaning that this knowledge will allow them to better predict what the brain will do.

Up until now, the only data available regarding the wiring of the human brain came from studying the deceased. In the living brain, typical MRI studies could only note the ups and downs of neural activity, which could be applied to actions such as decision making, but failed to show the underlying workings in the brain.

The scientists involved in this study see this map as the first step towards the development of a full-scale model of the human brain. The potential use of this new technology is limitless.

Healing from traumatic brain injuries or spinal cord injuries involves a variety of mental and physical processes and responses. “Biofeedback is a technique that uses monitoring instruments to measure and feed back information about muscle tension, heart rate, sweat responses, skin temperature, or brain activity” - all pertinent indicators of the healing process.

How can this help you with the healing process? Understanding how your body is reacting to stress, pain and  yes, even your thoughts, can help you to gain a better grasp on exactly what will and won’t help and hinder your healing from these injuries. “Biofeedback can help you learn to influence your own physiological responses to physical, emotional or psychological stress” by pinpointing thought patterns and emotions that are working against the healing process.

Does this sound a bit “new-age”? Give it a chance. Picture electrodes hooked up to the affected areas of your body that are involved with your injury or are tight from the resulting stress and pain. Now as you work through various thoughts and emotions, the machine responds with beeps or in a visual display that alerts you to which part of your body is reacting to that thought.

With this knowledge and the immediate feedback from the machine, you are able to work on changing your thoughts and your reactions to strong stresses and even figure out how to catch the stress before it begins to rise and negatively influence your body. After practice creates a familiarity with your physical responses, you will be able to work through this without the biofeedback instruments.

For more information, visit the Mayo Clinic.

Certain types of brain injury have traditionally been nearly impossible to physically detect. Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed a new way of interpreting MRI data that could change that.

This new way of measuring is able to detect damaged caused by the sheering of nerve cells in the brain. According to the senior author of the paper, this type of brain injury may account for up to half of all traumatic brain injuries from car accidents. Read more here.