Head Impact Analysis related to the Mechanism of Diffuse Axonal Injury

The simulation of the head subjected to the impact acceleration was conducted to understand the mechanism of a diffuse axonal injury. It is known that the diffuse axonal injury frequently occurs in motor vehicle accidents. Gennarelli et al. proposed that a diffuse axonal injury occurs while a head is subjected to rather a lateral rotational impact than a sagittal or oblique impact. The obtained result shows that the higher stress occurred in a deep area of brain near the leading edge of a falx cerebri and tentorium cerebelli. It was confirmed that the greater stress areas of the brain matched the fact that DAI often involve the injury in a corpus callosum and a brain stem. Moreover, the brain dysfunctions due to an injury in the higher stress areas correspond to the residual disability in the diffuse axonal injury. We expect that the injury in a brain stem and cerebral limbic system is the essential of the diffuse axonal injury.