Controlled cortical impact (CCI) is a widely used laboratory neurotrauma model to study traumatic brain injury. During CCI, the brain is damaged by an impactor tip, which travels along its axial direction to a pre-defined depth at a pre-set speed. A recent study, however, using high-speed imaging analysis demonstrated that the impactor tip of an electromagnetically driven CCI device experienced repeated impacts and lateral movements, rather than a single axial impact. How these repeated impacts and lateral movements affect internal brain stresses/strains—which are the direct cause of neuronal damage and affect the accuracy and reproducibility of CCI—remains unknown. We use a previously validated, highly detailed three-dimensional finite element (FE) mouse brain model to investigate the effect of repeated impacts and lateral movements on brain responses during CCI. We also measured tip movements of an in-house pneumatically driven CCI and conducted FE simulations. We found that the repeated impacts had minimal effect on peak strains. The lateral movements of the tip, however, greatly increased brain strains and affected large brain regions. Hence, it is necessary to monitor and control lateral movements to ensure the accuracy and reproducibility of CCI.
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