For example, interest existed in cooling the injured brain; however, a 2020 Cochrane review did not find enough evidence to see if it was useful or not. Maintaining a normal temperature in the immediate period after a TBI appeared useful. One review found a lower than normal temperature was useful in adults but not children. While two other reviews found it did not appear to be useful.Further research is necessary to determine if the vasoconstrictor indomethacin (indometacin) can be used to treat increased pressure in the skull following a TBI.In addition, drugs such as NMDA receptor antagonists to halt neurochemical cascades such as excitotoxicity showed promise in animal trials but failed in clinical trials. These failures could be due to factors including faults in the trials design or in the insufficiency of a single agent to prevent the array of injury processes involved in secondary injury.Other topics of research have included investigations into mannitol, dexamethasone, progesterone, xenon, barbiturates, magnesium (no strong evidence), calcium channel blockers, PPAR-γ agonists, curcuminoids, ethanol, NMDA antagonists, caffeine. Procedures
In addition to traditional imaging modalities, there are several devices that help to monitor brain injury and facilitate research. Microdialysis allows ongoing sampling of extracellular fluid for analysis of metabolites that might indicate ischemia or brain metabolism, such as glucose, glycerol, and glutamate. Intraparenchymal brain tissue oxygen monitoring systems (either Licox or Neurovent-PTO) are used routinely in neurointensive care in the US.
Monitoring pressure
Pressure reactivity index is used to correlate intracranial pressure with arterial blood pressure to give information about the state of cerebral perfusion, thus guiding treatment and prevent excessively high or low blood flow to the brain. However, such method of monitoring intracranial pressure of equal or less than 20 mmHg is no better than imaging and clinical examination that monitor the neurological status of the brain in prolonging the survival, preserving the mental or functional status of the subject. Sensory processing
In animal models of TBI, sensory processing has been widely studied to show systematic defects arise and are slowly but likely only partially recovered. It is especially characterised by an initial period of decreased activity in upper cortical layers. This period of decreased activity has also been characterised as by specific timing effects in the patterns of cortical activity in these upper layers in response to regular sensory stimuli. References
Cited texts
The original version of this article contained text from the NINDS public domain pages on TBI Archived December 18, 2016, at the Wayback Machine

External links

Brain injury at Curlie
The Brain Injury Hub – information and practical advice to parents and family members of children with acquired brain injury Archived October 5, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center – U.S. Department of Defense Military Health System center for traumatic brain injury Archived October 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine