October 23, 2015
It's All in the Behavior
Imagine being involved in a sudden accident: though lasting only a split-second, the aftermath will impact you, and the rest of your life, forever. In the world of neuroscience and medicine, many existing studies regarding traumatic brain injury focus solely on an efficacious treatment for individuals within the first 8 hours post-trauma. But what happens after that initial time frame? How do we help people who are suffering not only live better, but also more normal, lives post-injury? By working with Sprague Dawley rats, in the Neurotrauma Research Laboratory at the University of California—Davis, I learned how normal functions of the hippocampus—the brain's learning and memory center—can be very vulnerable. Neurotrauma negatively affects learning and memory by disrupting hippocampal theta oscillations, leading to behavioral impairments. Our goal is to figure out a way to treat the brain directly, so that we can greatly improve the status and situation of individuals suffering from traumatic brain injury.
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