“ People may assume younger brains are more resilient after injury, but our findings suggest the story is much more nuanced.”
Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery Follows Different Neurological Paths with Age
“ People may assume younger brains are more resilient after injury, but our findings suggest the story is much more nuanced.”
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Conventional wisdom holds that younger brains are better equipped to recover from injury. Their greater flexibility allows them to adapt, rebuild connections and compensate for damage in ways older brains often cannot. But recovery can mask harmful changes that continue unfolding beneath the surface. New research from Texas A & M University suggests that same flexibility may come with an unexpected downside.
The findings, published in Experimental Neurology, challenge long-held assumptions about recovery after traumatic brain injury( TBI) and illuminate neural pathways that may also contribute to later cognitive decline.
Using laboratory models of TBI, researchers discovered that younger brains may be more vulnerable to the processes that lead to post-traumatic epilepsy, a chronic seizure disorder that can emerge months or even years after an injury. Older brains showed fewer signs of epilepsy but were vulnerable to neuroinflammation, circuit remodeling