Though traumatic brain injury is fairly common, doctors and brain researchers cannot know exactly what happens inside the head at the moment the skull is struck, whether suddenly and violently or subtly but repeatedly over the course of years. Matthew Panzer, a mechanical and biomedical engineering professor at the University of Virginia and deputy director of its Center for Applied Biomechanics, is developing ways to get inside the head, so to speak, and visualize what happens when the brain is strained, twisted, stretched and sheared as it's hit from different angles, or when it suddenly undergoes a change in directional motion.

More Information: news.virginia.edu