Modeling shockwaves through the brain
Since the start of the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 300,000 soldiers have returned to the United States with traumatic brain injury caused by exposure to bomb blasts — and in particular, exposure to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Symptoms of traumatic brain injury can range from the mild, such as lingering headaches and nausea, to more severe impairments in memory and cognition. Since 2007, the U.S. Department of Defense has recognized the critical importance and complexity of this problem, and has made significant investments in traumatic brain injury research. Nevertheless, there remain many gaps in scientists’ understanding of the effects of blasts on the human brain; most new knowledge has come from experiments with animals. Now MIT researchers have developed a scaling law that predicts a human’s risk of brain injury, based on previous studies of blasts’ effects on animal brains. The method may help the military develop...