A conference held last Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital was held to showcase new technology for traumatic brain injuries. Recent news has shed light on two causes of TBIs: concussions from sports and soldiers wounded by explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TBIs are hard to diagnose and treat because they all yield different symptoms and results. The conference which was many presented on PowerPoint showed the progress that medical specialists have made recently. The conference mainly focused on TBIs of wounded soldiers in Afghanistan.

Specialist described cases that they had worked through, one involving a soldier who suffered a fractured skull and pooling of blood on the brain. Doctors kept him in a medically induced coma for a week, and was kept for a month in the hospital. Six months later “he was completely fine”.

Another soldier who faced a less severe injury from a blast about 100 feet away ended up with symptoms still present a year later. His symptoms included dizziness, headaches and other symptoms.

Specialists also spoke about how genetics can play a role in how individuals respond, but still further study needs to be done.

New York Rangers, Derek Boogaard, 28, was found dead in his apartment in Minneapolis last Friday. After much deliberation, his parents have decided to donate his brain to Boston University for an ongoing studying that researches concussion effects in athletes.

The cause of death has not been released, but Boogaard is one of many athletes whose brains have been donated to this study. Boston University’s Center has a donation registry for athletes to study effects of trauma on the brain and spinal cord.

Many suspect that the cause of death is CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition which is mostly found in people who are active in sports with common head injuries like football, hockey, and boxing, but is most prevalent in NFL players. Boogaard missed the last 52 games of hockey scores in the regular season with a concussion and shoulder injury and did not play in the ice hockey betting playoffs.

Former NFL safety Dave Duerson who committed suicide in February left a note requesting that his brain be donated as well. The study determined that Duerson suffered from CTE linked to concussions.

In February, former Chicago Bears safety David Duerson shot himself in the chest, leaving behind a note that asked that his brain be given to the NFL’s brain bank. Duerson’s wish was that his brain be studied for evidence of a certain disease striking athletes.

After studying Duerson’s brain, scientists found that Duerson’s brain tissue showed “moderately advanced” evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and no other evidence of other disease. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE is a dementia-like brain disease afflicting athletes exposed to repeated brain trauma. CTE can affect the areas that control judgment, inhibition, impulse control, mood and memory.

CTE has been linked to the brains of 14 of 15 former NFL players that have been studied.  All of the cases had one thing in common, repeated concussions and sub-concussive blows to the head or both. The picture beginning to emerge from these cases is that trauma could be causing brain damage.

Duerson suffered a minimum of 10 known concussions during the course of his career.

In the state of Montana, legislators are considering the passage of a primary seat-belt law. According to an article in the Great Falls Tribune, every state that has passed a primary seat-belt law has experienced a 15 percent increase in seat-belt usage, together with a corresponding reduction in deaths and injuries.
Although rather polemic, the article does raise some interesting points, including the contention that passage of primary seat-belt law results in the immediate reduction of at least two disabling injuries: traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.
Unfortunately, the writer – a police officer – does not give any data to support his claims and, although I have little reason to doubt him, you might want to check out the facts for yourself.

Research published in the Christmas edition of The British Medical Journal suggests that, in the interests of health, heavy metal bands and rock bands should be asked to replace songs such as “Highway to Hell” with “Moon River.” One suspects that hell may, indeed, freeze over before this happens.
The research authors found that there is an increasing risk of head and neck injury beginning at tempos of 130 beats per minute and that injury is related to the range of motion in the head banging style.
The average head banging song has a tempo of about 146 beats per minute and the authors suggest that head banging at this rate may cause headaches and dizziness, particularly if the range of movement of the head and neck is more than 75 degrees.
So, considering that hell is very unlikely to freeze over in the next couple of months, the following suggestions are designed to minimize damage:
* reduced head and neck motion
* head banging to lower tempo songs
* head banging to every second beat
* use of protective equipment such as neck braces
Science Daily

A team of researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia studied twenty-six ‘walking wounded’ adults with modest traumatic brain injury. They discovered that people with evidence of brain damage to their right parietal lobe score higher on a standard measure of spirituality.
This is because, neurologically, the right hemisphere of the brain helps you to define where you are in time and space. The right parietal lobe is associated with self-awareness in social situations and with the indefinables of life, such as insight. Disorders in this cerebral area are likely to result in difficulties with locating yourself in time and space – physically and emotionally. In other words, such damage can result in feelings of being ‘spaced-out’ or dislocated form the world.
In suggestible or susceptible individuals these feelings could be interpreted as ‘religious experience.’

HASSERS

Scientists in Italy and Switzerland have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes improve nerve responsiveness, potentially making them good candidates for the design of ‘smart materials’ for use in medicine, including repair of the brain.
The journal, Nature Nanotechnology, has published the results of a study in which the researchers compared the electrical properties of carbon nanotubes with the electrical activity of the central nervous system. They also assessed the effect of nanotubes on neuro (nerve) response. The results showed that carbon nanotubes improve neuro-responsiveness.
According to Dr Henry Markram of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, the findings of the study represent a key to developing neuroprosthetics that will aid sight, sound, smell, and motion. Other applications would be to eliminate epileptic attacks, create spinal bypasses, and repair and even enhance cognitive functions.
The researchers also speculate that nanotubes could be used as a building block for future ‘electrical bypass’ systems to treat traumatic brain injury, or for novel electrodes that would replace metal parts of deep-brain-stimulation devices currently used to treat Parkinson’s disease and severe depression.
For further information:
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Nature Nanotechnology

Tom Fox, a former member of the US military and now a staff physiologist with Centre Hyperbare de L’Ile in Pincourt, Quebec, Canada, has said that hyperbaric oxygen therapy, as used to relieve the bends in divers, can also be use to assist soldiers returning from combat.
The bends occurs when divers are exposed to increased pressure without taking special precautions to prevent gas bubbles from forming in their bodies; hyperbaric oxygen is used to prevent the adverse side effects of the bubbles.
Fox believes the procedure can relieve mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because, he says, pressures like those that cause the bends in divers are routinely seen resulting from the explosion of IEDs. He qualifies that with the statement that, “the constellation of signs and symptoms attributable to mild TBI and PTSD is the same as those seen in a condition in which bubbles are formed from the exposure to excessive pressures.”
Fox has said that although he wants to present his findings to the Canadian Forces, he hasn’t been able to “get his foot in the door.”
The Daily Gleaner

It was announced on Tuesday that during an investigation of identical twins, one of whom had combat experience and one that did not, suggested that that both genetic and environmental factors contribute equally to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The purpose of the10-year survey was to assess whether PTSD occurs from an innate weakness or is only caused by a traumatic event.
Somehow, the research team, which is based at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, managed to locate 100 Vietnam veterans, each of whom has an identical twin who was never involved in combat.
Previous research had already suggested that the volume of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that deals with memory and response to stress, is implicated in PTSD. The research team established that this feature is shared in twins where one twin developed PTSD.
The team also established that both twins in a set where one had suffered from PTSD shared abnormalities in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain that is connected to our response to fear.
Along with several other cerebral anomalies, the suggestion is that these abnormalities present risk factors for PTSD. However, they also discovered several abnormalities not shared by the twins, like highly attuned startle reactions, resultant in amplified heart rates in the combat-exposed twin.
It is hoped that these results will help in developing guidelines for PTSD treatments in the future.
Red Orbit

“The government must do everything it can to help those veterans who suffer from the ‘signature injuries’ of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.” Said President-elect Obama in Chicago on Thursday. In the same speech, he also promised to help those who leave the service to find work
To this end, he has selected retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K Shinseki as his nominee to be secretary of veterans affairs.
Shinseki retired as chief of staff in 2003 after a four-year term. He graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, NY and served two combat tours in Vietnam as a young officer. He lost part of his foot in Vietnam, was awarded three Bronze Star awards and two Purple Hearts.
American Forces Press Service