March 2014 is Brain Injury Awareness Month, Help Us Spread the Word!

Looking to pitch in and help advocate for Brain Injury Awareness month? Your help is needed! Each year, 2.4 million Americans sustain a brain injury. As the Brain Injury Association puts it, "A brain injury can happen anytime, anywhere, to anyone - a brain injury does not discriminate."

If you're interested in helping but don't know how, visit the BIA's website here to read more about how you can do your part to spread awareness in your community. Through increased awareness, we can all learn about how to prevent brain injuries and how to help those around us recovering from them. 

Study: Brain Can Rewire Itself after Damage

Per ScienceDaily, "Credit: © unlim3d / Fotolia"Life scientists Michael Fanselow, Moriel Zelikowsky and Bryce Vissel from UCLA and Australia have conducted a research on rats that offers breakthrough results in brain science. The researchers found that the rodents can learn new tasks even after damage to the hippocampus. This experiment demonstrates that parts of the prefrontal cortex take over when the hippocampus, the brain’s key center of learning and memory formation is disabled. "I expect that the brain probably has to be trained through experience," said Fanselow, a professor of psychology and member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, who was the study's senior author. "In this case, we gave animals a problem to solve." It is also the first demonstration of neural-circuit plasticity, which means that when the brain’s primary “learning center” is damaged, complex new neural circuits arise to compensate for the lost function. The regions of the brain involved in creating those alternate paths are often far from the damaged site. This finding could provide potential insights to help scientists develop new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke and other conditions involving brain damage. More information is available at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130515165027.htm 

President Obama's BRAIN Initiative seeks to Map the Human Brain

 The Obama administration’s proposed initiative, Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN), offers a new surge towards mapping the human brain. A new understanding of the brain could provide promising new treatments for conditions such as traumatic brain injuries, Alzheimer’s, autism, and strokes among others. As a linchpin of this initiative, President Obama has asked Congress to contribute $100 million in 2014 to researchers studying the complexities of the brain. Describing BRAIN, Obama notes, “As humans we can identify galaxies light-years away. We can study particles smaller than an atom, but we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears.” Hopefully, Congress will get on board with the President and make this worthwhile investment in understanding the brain through BRAIN!

To learn more about the BRAIN Initiative, check out the below links...

NPR: President Obama Calls for a BRAIN Initiative

The White House: President Obama is Callin on the Science Community to Join Him in Pursuing a Grand Challenge

or watch Dr. Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, describe BRAIN in this quick video

Recent Canadian Study Helps Youngsters to Prevent Brain Injury

Dr. Michael Cusimano, photo courtesy of St. Michaels HospitalAccording to a new study by St. Michael's Hospital in Canada, hockey took up 44.3 percent of all injuries and almost 70 percent of them occurred in children over 10 because of player-to-player contact or being hit into the boards. The study collected data from the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program to look at almost 13,000 children and youth aged 5-19 who had a sports-related brain injury between 1990 and 2009. The results also found that the youngest age group was at the highest risk for getting seriously injured in baseball. Most of the 15.3 percent of injuries occurred in children under the age of 14, with 45 percent of them in children under nine. "These results give us a very specific prevention message for kids under nine who play baseball: make helmets and supervision mandatory," said Dr. Cusimano, a neurosurgeon and leader of the study. He further suggests that "having educational programs, proper equipment, rules and other incentives that support a culture of safety in sports should be a mandate of parents, coaches, players, sports organizations, schools, sports sponsors, and other groups like governments."

More information is at: Science Daily, "New Study Aims to Prevent Sports-Related Brain Injury in Youngsters"

BrainLine.org: "20 Life-Changing Android Apps for People with Brain Injury"

We recently learned of BrainLine.org which offers many great resources for "preventing, treating, and living with traumatic brain injury." Click here to check out BrainLine's new segment on smartphone apps that can help those living with brain injuries.