Average Biomechanical Responses of the Human Brain Grouped by Age and Sex

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Author(s)Alshareef, Ahmed
Author(s)Carass, Aaron
Author(s)Lu, Yuan-Chiao
Author(s)Mojumder, Joy
Author(s)Diano, Alexa M.
Author(s)Bailey, Olivia M.
Author(s)Okamoto, Ruth J.
Author(s)Pham, Dzung L.
Author(s)Prince, Jerry L.
Author(s)Bayly, Philip V.
Author(s)Johnson, Curtis L.
Date Accessioned2025-05-27T17:30:57Z
Date Available2025-05-27T17:30:57Z
Publication Date2025-04-09
DescriptionThis article was originally published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-025-03725-y. © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
AbstractTraumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occur from rapid head motion that results in brain deformation. Computational models are typically used to estimate brain deformation to predict risk of injury and evaluate the effectiveness of safety countermeasures. The accuracy of these models relies on validation to experimental brain deformation data. In this study, we create the first group-average biomechanical responses of the brain, including structure, material properties, and deformation response, by age and sex from 157 subjects. Subjects were sorted intro three age groups—young, mid-age, and older—and by sex to create group-average neuroanatomy, material properties, and brain deformation response to non-injurious loading using structural and specialized magnetic resonance imaging data. Computational models were also built using the group-average geometry and material properties for each of the six groups. The material properties did not depend on sex, but showed a decrease in shear stiffness in the older adult group. The brain deformation response also showed differences in the distribution of strain and a decrease in the magnitude of maximum strain in the older adult group. The computational models were simulated using the same non-injurious loading conditions as the subject data. While the models’ strain response showed differences among the models, there were no clear relationships with age. Further studies, both modeling and experimental, with more data from subjects in each age group, are needed to clarify the mechanisms underlying the observed changes in strain response with age, and for computational models to better match the trends observed across the group-average responses.
SponsorOpen access funding provided by the Carolinas Consortium. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01NS112120. Partial support was also provided by the Department of Defense in the Military Traumatic Brain Injury Initiative and grant W81XWH2211117 from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, Uniformed Services University, or the Department of Defense.
CitationAlshareef, A., Carass, A., Lu, YC. et al. Average Biomechanical Responses of the Human Brain Grouped by Age and Sex. Ann Biomed Eng 53, 1496–1511 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-025-03725-y
ISSN1573-9686
URLhttps://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/36190
Languageen_US
PublisherAnnals of Biomedical Engineering
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Keywordstraumatic brain injury
Keywordsmagnetic resonance imaging
Keywordsbrain deformation
Keywordsgroup average
Keywordsfinite element modeling
TitleAverage Biomechanical Responses of the Human Brain Grouped by Age and Sex
TypeArticle
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