Category Archives: Brain and Spinal Injuries

In 1888, college football officials voted to allow tackling below the waist. Before long, protective padding was required for players. Helmets, however, were considered optional.

One of the first known helmets designed specifically for the game was made by a Maryland shoemaker for a Naval Academy midshipman named Joseph Reeves, who was told by a doctor that he had to give up football or else risk death from another kick in the head. Determined to play in the 1893 Army-Navy game, Reeves consulted the shoemaker to create a protective device for his head.

In those early days, a football helmet looked about the same as an early aviator’s cap: an egg-shaped skullcap made of soft leather, with ear flaps and light padding on the inside. Hardly a helmet, it was known as a “head harness.” But by 1915, more padding and flaps were being added, along with ear holes so that athletes could hear plays being called. (more…)

The quest to find therapies for helping victims of traumatic brain injury recover took an exciting turn last year, when University of South Florida researchers began to experiment with transplanting stem cells into the damaged region of TBI patients’ brains.

Stem cells, as many people know, are essentially “blank slate” cells. They are the earliest form of cells, which haven’t developed a specific function or form yet. Each part of the body — tissue, organ, bone — gives rise to stem cells, which then develop into that particular part of the body.

But as scientists have discovered, stem cells have an immense amount of potential to become truly anything, and take on any function. But can stem cells be used to rebuild damaged portions of the brain? 
(more…)

In high schools and colleges around the nation, female athletes are on the rise in terms of both number and performance. Forty-two percent of all high-school athletes in the nation are female; 46% of all players on NCAA Division I teams are women. Both are all-time highs, and both have Title IX defenders celebrating the shift in culture.

These are indeed exciting statistics. But their darker underside was recently revealed in an article in the SF Gate: Concussions sustained by female athletes are gaining on the record set by boys.

Girls’ soccer is second only to boys’ football in the number of concussions that take place during a given game. While it trails the number of football concussions by a considerable margin — soccer is responsible for 8% of all high school player concussions, while football takes the blame for a whopping 47% — the statistic is complicated by the recent revelation that concussions present different symptoms in girls than in boys.

(more…)

For most humans, it may not be the most flattering idea to think of their brains as resembling that of a mouse.

But a new breed of “super mice” at Stanford University, featured in an article in the science publication Discover, are changing that perception. Scientists are studying them for ways to reverse brain damage.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The mice live in a carefully guarded facility, visited only by their keeper, neurobiologist Carla Shatz, and her exclusive laboratory team. These mice learn complex tasks with
amazing speed. They recover more quickly from brain injuries. And even with one eye removed, they beat other one-eyed mice in visual sensory tests.

However, the mice are not super in every way. The reason they are so carefully guarded is because their immune systems are incredibly fragile.

Shatz has bred them without certain crucial proteins needed for fighting off germs. (more…)

Last year, the BBC released a scandalous film that highlighted the poor care to which brain injury victims are routinely subjected. Audiences were aghast to see health care workers in their own national healthcare system treating rehabilitation center patients with carelessness — at best — and often with actions bordering on abusive. Safety procedures were ignored, hygiene was neglected and, in at least one case, doctors’ orders were directly violated.

The film was made by the spouse of one
brain injury patient whose concerns over her partner’s well-being were repeatedly ignored. Rather than give up, she installed a secret camera in his room. Among other things, the footage showed a health care assistant cleaning the patient’s stomach tube with the tip of a pen, and giving him drinks of water even though he was supposed to receive nothing through the mouth.

The film brought much-needed attention to the plight of brain injury patients in Britain’s National Healthcare System. But it also shows the awful effects that ignorance and lack of care have on the well-being of a victim of brain trauma. Even those who are surrounded by a loving support system can suffer due to a family’s lack of information or assumptions about their condition.

In addition to helping brain injury victims get justice and legal resources to improve their lives, we at the Brain Injury Law Center want to help our community with resources for learning what to expect in this new chapter of their lives and how to offer the best possible support to a loved one suffering from brain injury or trauma.

Here are a few of the things we’ve learned. (more…)

The effects of trauma and injury on the brain, as devastating as they can be, are in some ways like a mystery novel. While there are patterns to certain symptoms resulting from certain kinds of injury, you never quite know how each individual brain will respond. Some people lapse into a coma; others wind up with abilities to play music or paint. Some get withdrawn or exhibit stroke-like impairments of speech and behavior, while others demonstrate a new physical and social freedom.

One thing is certain–brain trauma is never expected, and carries life-changing consequences for its victims and their loved ones.

It’s no wonder, then, that documentary films abound examining the subject of brain injury and trauma. These real-life stories attempt to shed light on the mysterious channels of the body’s response to malfunctions in its control center — how the brain attempts to reconfigure, how the body adjusts to help in the healing process and how doctors are constantly forming new opinions and designing treatments that allow brain trauma victims to not only survive their injury, but thrive in recovery.

Here are some of the top films we have found in recent years relating to traumatic brain injury: (more…)

Anyone who has suffered a brain injury, or had a loved one suffer the same, knows that not all symptoms are the alike.

Take the case of seizure. It can be the result of brain trauma, such as concussions or a bullet wound, which have long-term consequences for the brain’s ability to function normally. It can also be the cause of brain trauma, as in cases of epilepsy, meningitis or stroke, where the brain’s existing disease causes seizure that further harms the brain.

But now, in either case, doctors are discovering ways to detect seizures before they happen.

(more…)

“We have uncovered a fundamentally new intervention strategy that can dramatically affect recovery of voluntary movement in individuals with complete paralysis even years after surgery.”

Even those whose ears get numb after too much “doctor-speak” can hear the excitement in this report from neurology journal Brain. Read it over again, and you’ll realize that you’re not having trouble understanding what it’s saying…you’re most likely having trouble believing that it’s true.

But ever since the report was published last September, the exciting truth has spread all over the news, from CNN to internet buzz-site Mashable. Both of those outlets called it a “breakthrough.”

Scientists are finding a way to help paralyzed patients move again. (more…)

Great news: the latest science suggests that types of brain trauma formerly believed irreparable can possibly be healed.

Nature Communications, an online research journal of biological and physical studies, just released a study by researchers at Imperial College London and the Hertie Institute, University of Tuebingen.

These scientists report that they may have found a way to regrow nerve fibers in the central nervous system.

The Secret: Protein PCAF

Up to now, damage to nerve fibers has always been deemed untreatable. It can result from a spinal cord injury or stroke, as well as from various types of brain trauma. It results in paralysis and loss of sensation or motor skills, which no amount of therapy or surgery can bring back.

(more…)

As Brain Injury Awareness Month continues here in Virginia, we’re very pleased to report a new step in understanding concussions that comes from an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

Recognizing that even so-called “mild” forms of traumatic brain injury can result in lifelong damage, the team is using mathematical modeling to understand exactly how the brain becomes concussed. The team includes a professor of material science and engineering, a professor of neurosurgery and a laboratory technician. They have joined forces to figure out how to protect the brain from the effects of traumatic injury.

Flexible…Yet Fragile?

It’s long been known that brain cells have long, tendril-like parts called axons, which are notoriously elastic. The mystery is why these stretchy, flexible axons would break so easily under brain trauma.