| Description |
Title: "Animal Model of Acute and Chronic Effects of Blast Traumatic Brain Injury"
Committee:
Lee Goldstein, Psychiatry (Advisor, Chair)
Dimitrjie Stamenovic, BME
Steve Colburn, BME
William Moss, Lawrence Livermore National Lab
Neil Kowall, Neurology
Abstract:
Blast-related traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the signature injury of the military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. We recently showed that military veterans exposed to blast shock waves from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) exhibit clinical signs, symptoms, and neuropathology consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive tau protein-linked neurodegenerative disease reported in athletes with repetitive head injuries. CTE-related symptoms seen in blast-exposed military veterans include persistent TBI symptoms, chronic neuropsychiatric disability, and progressive cognitive dysfunction. This dissertation will test the hypothesis that rapid changes in head acceleration during blast (jerk) lead to development of damaging stresses in the brain consistent with hallmarks of CTE. In this thesis I will: 1) design a blast shock tube model with experimental protocols to test kinematic mechanisms of blast-induced TBI, 2) validate a mouse model of traumatic brain injury resulting from a single-blast exposure that comports with human case studies of blast-exposed military veterans diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), 3) characterize the mechanism of injury in blast-induced TBI that explains similarities seen between blast and impact cases of human CTE, 4) assess clinical relevance of blast model to the human cases of blast-induced TBI and compare acute versus chronic symptomology, and 5) show how basic mechanical principles can be used to predict organic brain injury resulting from blast exposure. |
