Live Science staff writer Nicoleta Lanese submitted a recent report on the damage that concussions can have on the bridge between the two halves of the brain. Even a bump to the head can send the brain jumping around inside the skull. This will disrupt the flow of information from one half of the brain to the other.
A new study focused on a dense bundle of nerve fibers that are known as the corpus callosum. This normally serves the right hemispheres of the brain in order to talk to each other. When the wires are crisscrossing, it can sustain serious damage if the brain suddenly twists or bounces against the skull and can result in mild traumatic brain injury known as a concussion.
When someone receives a concussive blow that shakes the corpus callosum it is more violent than any other structure in the brain. They do not know exactly how the resulting injuries might affect the brain function. According to their new research, they have pinpointed how concussion-induced injury knocks brain activity off its normal course.
There is a relationship between the microstructure of the corpus callosum in the healthy brain and how quickly we process information. Co-author Dr. Melanie Wegener, a resident physician at New York University Langone Health said the relationship is altered after concussion. The findings of the new study could help clinicians gauge how much damage a patient has incurred after concussion and guide their treatment.
Brain scans were used in the study to peer through the skulls of 36 patients who had suffered a mild traumatic brain injury less than four weeks prior and 27 additional participants without traumatic brain injury. A technique called diffusion MRI was used to investigate how water molecules move in and around the nerve fibers in the participants’ heads.
Water in the brain tends to travel rapidly along bundles of nerve fibers oriented in a similar direction. The diffusion MRI allows scientists to map these cerebral waterways in pristine detail and infer the position, size and density of individual nerve fibers that weave and wind through the brain.
The left side of the brain serves as a major hub for language processing, meaning that written words must be wired to the left hemisphere before we can read them aloud. Crossing from one side of the brain to the other takes time, so people take longer to read words that appear on their left side than those on their right.
Healthy and previously concussed patients performed the same on the test by reading right-side words aloud with no trouble, but experiencing a brief delay when presented left-side words. Those having had a concussion had no apparent link between the selenium and test performance. Even though it is not clear how the brain responds after injury, results do suggest that healthy brain structures may help cover for damaged ones after concussion, Wegener said.
They aim to combine brain imaging with a type of artificial intelligence software to accurately detect brain injury in those with concussion to decide their course of treatment for the patient.
Dr Fredda Branyon