Bridging the sex gap in traumatic brain injury biomechanics

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a multi-anatomical-scale mechanical injury affecting 30 million women globally each year. brainsex will focus on the sex specific biomechanics of TBI in the elderly population motivated by the highest reported incidence of TBI in people over 75-years old. Furthermore, in the elderly population women account for more TBIs than men.

However, women remain underrepresented in TBI research. Finite element brain models (FEBMs) have played a major role in improving our understanding of TBI.

However, current FEBMs have been developed using male-only data and cannot accurately model female TBI due to the distinct sex specific neuroanatomies.

I will embark on frontier research to test the hypothesis that TBI biomechanics are sex specific due to the multiscale sex specific neuroanatomy, causing damage to brain tissue, cerebral vasculature, and neurons under lower impact forces in women compared to men.

To realize this ambitious goal, my team and I will develop ground-breaking sex specific FEBMs incorporating the multiscale sex specific neuroanatomy and constitutive damage properties of brain tissue and cerebral vasculature providing more accurate predictions of TBI from high energy head impacts.

We will develop novel experimental technologies to characterise the constitutive damage properties of brain and cerebrovascular tissue (Aim 1), and neurons (Aim 2) under conditions required to model brain deformation during TBI.

This data will be used to develop the first ever microstructure-informed constitutive damage model for brain tissue (Aim 2).

This model combined with the FEBMs will revolutionise TBI biomechanics (Aim 3). brainsex will open new research horizons for biomechanics research focussing on the important role sex plays in tissue biomechanics. brainsex will deliver a breakthrough in our understanding of TBI biomechanics by delineating the sex dependent mechanical behaviour of brain tissue and cerebral vasculature during head impacts.