Whether it means a shorter recovery time in terms of basic daily living skills, not enduring a lifetime of neurofatigue or brain fog, or simply emerging from a coma sooner, continued progress is something everyone can be excited about, whether a survivor or brain injury professional or a caregiver.

Several Tech Advancements Offer Hope for Brain Injury Research

By Christina Eichelkraut

Technological advancement almost always dovetails with progress in medicine in bioscience. New technologies amplify the power of research by making it easier to gather and effectively analyze more data. Often, the technology itself becomes a groundbreaking treatment, such as spinal implants that help those who are paralyzed to walk again.

Brain injury, however, has proven to be a more challenging area for technology and research to tackle. This is partly due to the highly individualistic way brain injury presents in people. As both professionals and caregivers in this community know, even if two people have an injury to the same part of the brain or a similar “type” of brain injury, the impact and symptoms of the injury can vary. One person may struggle primarily with brain fog, whereas another may grapple with severe short-term memory loss or aphasia. As the saying goes, if you’ve seen one brain injury, you’ve seen one brain injury. That makes medical advancement, which frequently relies on identifying patterns for treatment or diagnosis, especially difficult.

Another obstacle to studying brain injury and developing treatment for it is practical. The actual physical location of the brain makes specific types of studies in patients who are still living difficult to perform. Autopsies on brain injury survivors who have died can not give insight in the functional mechanics of the brain while living, crucial information in determining what treatment is needed.

Reason to Hope and Continue

Despite these and other challenges, significant progress has been made in many areas of brain injury research.

New concussion protocols allow for near-instant, reliable diagnosis of concussions. Doctors are better informed about neuroplasticity and how to leverage it as a way to shorten recovery time. The time to mobility or for patients to regain basic functions, such as speaking or basic motor skills, has decreased in some TBI patients.

Many of these advancements are due to brain injury being designated the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. An entire generation of military veteran brain injury survivors paid an incalculable price that led to brain injury research and treatment receiving an astronomical level of investment from the Department of Defense. This extraordinary amount of research and funding is likely to continue through 2024 but, devastatingly, largely because it is more necessary than ever.  

Undeniably, this funding has led to tangible improvements for all survivors of brain injury, whether veterans or not. Battlefield-developed protocols designed to quickly and accurately diagnose concussions are being implemented on sports playing fields. We have a far better understanding of how traumatic brain injury, or TBI, interacts with PTSD, leading to more effective, holistic treatment of both.

Better resources for medical practitioners, from advanced scanning tools to user-friendly software that enables better patient communication, have empowered many brain injury professionals, from neurosurgeons to speech pathologists, with the ability to offer more impactful treatment.

So, although there is still no “cure” for brain injury, there is reason to hope for better outcomes. Below are some of the advancements we’re most excited about.

More Targeted Treatment for TBI

Currently, the vast majority of TBI treatments focus on leveraging neuroplasticity to help patients recover. For example, helping aphasia victims relearn to speak or a stroke patient to regain mobility. That is undeniably positive, but more recently, researchers have begun to examine the potential efficacy of focusing on directly treating the exact location in the brain that is damaged.

Deep brain stimulation is a new technique that focuses on re-stimulating a specific area of the brain, the central lateral nucleus, in people with moderate to severe brain injuries. The goal is to help patients who had already recovered a large amount of basic functioning with the lingering cognitive impacts of brain injury.

These include symptoms like brain fog, short-term memory loss and neuro fatigue.

In a recent study, a surgical implant stimulated the central lateral nucleus for a specific amount of time. Importantly, a virtual model of the brain was created to ensure the exact right area of the brain in each person was targeted (everyone’s brain is shaped differently, and injuries add further complexity to identifying the central lateral nucleus).

The people with brain injuries varied in age, from 22 years old to over 60 years old. They had experienced their brain injury at different points in time, with some having been injured three years earlier and others up to 18 years earlier. However, all of them drastically improved in their cognitive function, even allowing them to resume activities such as reading a book or getting through a day without napping.

The research indicates that this new approach to treating brain injury—focusing on the damaged area of the brain as opposed to treating the severity of symptoms—is a promising perspective shift.

In the same vein, researchers at Penn Medicine were recently awarded an $8 million grant to find ways to identify TBI biomarkers. By pinpointing specific types of brain injury through distinct biomarkers, researchers hope to develop more specific treatment protocols that may be more effective.

Another potentially promising breakthrough – but one that has not been able to be tested in people yet – is the use of nanotechnology to deliver medications directly to specific brain injuries to stop or treat neurodegeneration.

Getting medicine to the brain has historically proven to be one of medical science’s most challenging problems due to the blood-brain barrier. Early studies, however, indicate that nanoparticles are able to cross that barrier. Theoretically, they could deliver medication to a targeted area of the brain as a result.  

The implications for brain injury treatment are significant. When a brain injury occurs, the brain becomes inflamed, causing surrounding areas to begin to degenerate. This is called a neuroinflammatory cascade, and it’s responsible for hematomas and anoxia injuries. Using nanoparticles, theoretically, physicians could treat a damaged area of the brain with anti-inflammatory medication, possibly in the near-immediate aftermath of the injury.

A New Era for Brain Injury Research and Treatment

All of these are pioneering advancements when it comes to brain injury. Whether it means a shorter recovery time in terms of basic daily living skills, not enduring a lifetime of neuro fatigue or brain fog, or simply emerging from a coma sooner (in many cases, this will increase the degree of recovery), continued progress is something everyone can be excited about, whether a survivor or brain injury professional or a caregiver.

ABOUT BRAIN INJURY ASSOCIATION OF ARIZONA

The Brain Injury Association of Arizona (BIAAZ) is the only statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of adults and children with all types of brain injuries through prevention, advocacy, awareness and education. BIAAZ also houses the Arizona Brain Health Resource Center, a collection of educational information and neuro-specific resources for brain injury survivors, caregivers, family members and professionals.

What began in 1983 as a grassroots effort has grown into a strong statewide presence, providing valuable life-long resources and community support for individuals with all types of brain trauma at no charge.