SMART BRAIN

A scientific milestone rests on the worktop in Villanova’s Cellular Biomechanics and Sports Science Laboratory in White Hall: a highly instrumented, first-of-its-kind “smart brain.” Separated from its transparent skull by a thin layer of fluid, the deeply creviced pink gel mold mimics the physiological makeup of the human brain.

Though it stops short of actually thinking, the smart brain holds important implications for research, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Inventor Qianhong Wu, PhD, director of the laboratory and associate professor of Mechanical Engineering, and his collaborators received a patent for this new technology in December 2018.

With it, they hope to advance fundamental understanding of how the human brain works and provide unprecedented access to its inner workings. Dr. Wu compares the technology to the black box recorder on an airplane. “When a plane goes down, officials know there has been an incident—but why it happened is discovered only when the black box is recovered,” he says. “Similarly, the smart brain can give us a better understanding of why a brain injury occurred.”

Equipped with high-speed cameras, accelerometers, and displacement and pressure sensors, the smart brain can record hard data pertaining to various types of impact, the actions they prompt and the injuries they cause in the brain. “Prevailing technology looks at the skull and brain as a whole, but we were determined to show what happens to the brain itself upon impact—something no one has done previously,” Dr. Wu explains.

“We’ve always known impact causes damage, but we’d never seen the mechanism that lies between the two,” he says. It was precisely this “between the lines” mystery that has eluded foundational science pertaining to TBI until now.

From Lab Research to Clinical Findings

According to the Brain Injury Association, a brain injury occurs in the US every nine seconds, and at least 2.5 million people sustain a TBI every year. One of every 60 Americans lives with a TBI-related disability, ranging from sight, hearing and/or memory loss, to depression and cognitive impairments.

“Until now there has been no proactive way to determine how these TBIs occur,” Dr. Wu says. “Most work has been computational, lacking experiential verification. There has been no reallife way to validate computational findings.” That’s exactly what he and Jennifer are hoping to do in their work with Jefferson neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, MD, professor of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences, and Feroze Mohamed, PhD, director of Jefferson Integrated Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center.

“This collaboration is translational in terms of combining the work that Dr. Wu is doing in his laboratory and incorporating those ideas and findings into clinical research,” Dr. Newberg says. “Specifically, we can look inside the brains of people with head injuries and determine how their brains’ structures and functions are affected, and Dr. Wu’s modeling helps us to understand that.”

While Drs. Newberg and Mohamed have been scanning brain injury subjects, Jennifer has been scanning normal control subjects, then looking for differences between the control and injured brains in specific regions based on Dr. Wu’s analysis. “Dr. Wu’s lab looks at brain biomechanics from a purely engineering perspective, whereas Jefferson offers some anatomical information from real subject data,” Jennifer says.

The ability to pinpoint the exact cause and precise position of brain injury will be the climax of this trailblazing translation. Such a specific focus eventually may allow treating physicians to use more targeted imaging, yielding more specific and personalized information. “Medicine in general is subjective and qualitative; it is not an exact science. But here we are trying to make it quantitative and develop quantitative biomarkers for the status of the brain,” Dr. Mohamed says.

Dr. Wu hopes to provide doctors with a guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of concussive and subconcussive injury, and to inform the design of different types of protective helmets, not just for athletes, but also for construction workers, military personnel, and bike and motorcycle riders. “Caring is at the very heart of Villanova,” he says. “We are doing something meaningful here that will help improve the lives of many people. That is something of which I am truly proud.” ◼︎