Stanford Making Study To Understand And Prevent Concussions

Ask any sportsperson and they will have hundreds of story of how they were hit and what injuries they sustained. But the biggest untold stories are of concussions that are caused by various reasons. One of the most common reasons for death and casualties in small kids is the concussions caused while they were riding bicycles and other vehicles. David Camarillo, a bioengineer, recently presented his work in TED Talk. He spoke on the concussion prevention methods that he has worked on and why even the best of helmets fail to prevent the concussions.

Helmets are basically designed to save people from skull fracture and these have been doing their job well from last several years. But concussions are very different from that. NFL and CNC recently showed a graphic video that showcases how a concussion injures the system and how your soft brain can easily get bumped against the internal skull wall. The video also showcases how the outer part of brain gets damaged when concussion is over.

Camarillo came up with a new theory according to which brain is never as mobile as the experts claim. The cranial space never have enough space that can allow free movement of brain. The spinal fluids, on the other hand, act as protective layer. The brain also doesn’t show any solid movement as you think an entity like this would do. He thinks the brain to be more like a jello that sloshes in head in place of bouncing here and there. On this basis of this assumption, the team has developed a mouthguard with attached gyroscopes and accelerometers. The mouthguard fits well over the teeth of athlete and protects its connectivity with the skull. The team then performed concussion tests over dummies and prepared a data set for further analysis.

The project is still under making and will need some more modifications, but the idea seems a good breakthrough. Medical world is looking forward to further progress in this research and so are we.