Modeling Traumatic Brain Injuries, Aneurysms, and Strokes

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI), aneurysms and strokes are among the clinical conditions with the highest rates of fatality or long-term disability. To ameliorate these somber statistics, it is of paramount importance to understand how mechanical insults to the head, cause brain injuries and what the characteristic signatures of the onsets of aneurysms and strokes might be. While aneurysms and strokes are caused by abnormalities in the complex chemo-mechanical interactions between cerebral blood flow and the vasculature, TBI can damage vasculature and brain cells not only locally but also non-locally through the functional network established among neurons. In this chapter, we review some of the mathematical models of these conditions that have appeared in the literature.