Design of Human Head and Neck Replica to Facilitate Concussion and TBI Research

Abstract

Mitigating concussion and researching more about the motion of the brain is vital to develop safer protection gears for athletes and others around the world. The key to furthering research surrounding concussions is to dive deeper into the effect a hit to the head has on the brain. Most areas of this research look to analyze and track the movement of the head. As this may offer an idea as to what happens to the brain, there is still a completely different motion that the brain experiences during a hit. The goal of this project is to offer a realistic method to analyze the motion of the brain via a head and neck replica model. By creating a model with a human like brain within it, the motion of the brain can be tracked via accelerometers. Our goals with this project are to shed light on the lasting damage concussions can do to the brain and potentially study on further concussion prevention technology. What this project aims to accomplish is to create a head and neck model that can more accurately track the actual motion of the head and brain. Selection of the corresponding materials and validation of the model have been conducted. The purpose of creating this model would be to further the understanding of how the brain reacts to certain impacts within different scenarios.