Journal of neurotrauma
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2014
Assessment of an Experimental Rodent Model of Pediatric Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Childhood is one the highest risk periods for experiencing a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) from sports-related concussions, motor vehicle accidents, and falls. In addition, many children experience lingering symptomology (post-concussion syndrome) from these closed head injuries. Although the negative sequel of mTBI has been described, a clinically reliable animal model of mild pediatric brain injury has not. ⋯ Juvenile rats who experienced a single mTBI displayed significant motor/balance impairments when tested on the beam walking task and in the open field, as well as deficits of executive functioning as measured with the novel context mismatch task and the probe trial of the Morris water task. In addition, both male and female rats showed depression-like behavior in the forced swim task, with male rats also exhibiting decreased anxiety-related behaviors in the elevated plus maze. The results from this study suggest that the modified weight-drop technique induces a clinically relevant behavioral phenotype in juvenile rats, and may provide researchers with a reliable animal model of mTBI/concussion from which clinical therapeutic strategies could be developed.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2014
Contribution of psychological trauma to outcomes after traumatic brain injury: Assaults versus sporting injuries.
Clinical research into outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI) frequently combines injuries that have been sustained through different causes (e.g., car accidents, assaults, and falls), the effect of which is not well understood. This study examined the contribution of injury-related psychological trauma—which is more commonly associated with specific types of injuries—to outcomes after nonpenetrating TBI in order to determine whether it may be having a differential effect in samples containing mixed injuries. Data from three groups that were prospectively recruited for two larger studies were compared: one that sustained a TBI as a result of physical assaults (i.e., psychologically traumatizing) and another as a result of sporting injuries (i.e., nonpsychologically traumatizing), as well as an orthopedic control group (OC). ⋯ The TBI(assault) group reported significantly poorer psychosocial and emotional outcomes and higher rates of litigation (criminal rather than civil) than both the TBI(sport) and OC groups approximately 6 months postinjury, but there were no differences in the cognitive or functional outcomes of the three groups. The findings suggest that the cause of a TBI may assist in explaining some of the differences in outcomes of people who have seemingly comparable injuries. Involvement in litigation and the cause of an injury may also be confounded, which may lead to the erroneous conclusion that litigants have poorer outcomes.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2014
Physiological Complexity of Acute Traumatic Brain Injury in patients treated with a Brain Oxygen Protocol: Utility of Symbolic Regression (SR) in Predictive Modeling of a Dynamical System.
Predictive modeling of emergent behavior, inherent to complex physiological systems, requires the analysis of large complex clinical data streams currently being generated in the intensive care unit. Brain tissue oxygen protocols have yielded outcome benefits in traumatic brain injury (TBI), but the critical physiological thresholds for low brain oxygen have not been established for a dynamical patho-physiological system. High frequency, multi-modal clinical data sets from 29 patients with severe TBI who underwent multi-modality neuro-clinical care monitoring and treatment with a brain oxygen protocol were analyzed. ⋯ The SR model of TBI is generalizable to known physical laws. This increase in entropy reduces uncertainty and improves predictive capacity. SR is an appropriate computational framework to enable future smart monitoring devices.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2014
Supplementary motor area activation is impaired in severe traumatic brain injury parkinsonism.
A high percentage of survivors of severe traumatic brain injury present diffuse axonal injury and extrapyramidal symptoms. The association between diffuse cerebral damage and parkinsonian symptoms is probably because of the interruption of nigro-striato-frontal pathways. While functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used to investigate parkinsonism in idiopathic Parkinson disease, little is known about functional brain modifications related to post-traumatic parkinsonism (PTP). ⋯ During the mime of action, which involved actual movement, the hypoactivation was localized to the motor network. Our results suggest that patients with PTP showed a cerebral reorganization for motor tasks in agreement with the cerebral reorganization observed in idiopathic Parkinson disease. For patients with PTP, supplementary motor area impairment seems to play a central role in parkinsonism, in line with the brain reorganization of action-related tasks.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Apr 2014
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyEarly Trajectory of Psychiatric Symptoms After Traumatic Brain Injury: Relationship to Patient and Injury Characteristics.
Psychiatric disturbance is common and disabling after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Few studies have investigated the trajectory of psychiatric symptoms in the first 6 months postinjury, when monitoring and early treatment might prevent persistent difficulties. The aim of this study was to examine the trajectory of psychiatric symptoms 1-6 months post-TBI, the patient/injury characteristics associated with changes, and characteristics predictive of persisting symptoms. ⋯ Significant predictors of caseness included African American race, age from 30 to 60 years, longer post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) duration, pre-TBI unemployment, and pre-TBI risky alcohol use. Findings indicate that psychiatric symptoms are common in the first 6 months post-TBI and frequently extend beyond the depression and anxiety symptoms that may be most commonly screened. Patients with longer PTA and preinjury alcohol misuse may need more intensive monitoring for symptom persistence.