"How Blasts Injure the Brain"

neurocide:

Published today on PLoS, “A Possible Role for Integrin Signaling in Diffuse Axonal Injury” researchers shed light on understanding cellular injuries in the brain caused by explosion blasts. Unfortunately, the relevance of this expands further than the 300,000 soldiers that have experienced a traumatic brain injury. So how can a explosion of sound cause brain damage?

Through a microscope, the researchers saw that the “blast” caused swelling, breakage, and other signs of injuries to the neurons’ spindly axons and dendrites, which send and receive signals from other neurons. A series of biochemical experiments found that the mechanical force disrupted proteins called integrins that help anchor cells to the scaffold of protein that surrounds them. Integrins have roles in a wide range of biochemical signaling pathways, but Parker’s team identified one particular pathway that seems to play a role in injury to axons. 

A previous, but related study found:

… recent findings of damage to the brain’s white matter, which is made up of axons, in Iraq war veterans injured in blasts, Parker says. All the same, he cautions that much more work will be needed to see whether these culture dish findings are relevant to what happens in the brain of a soldier exposed to a blast. “It would be inappropriate to extrapolate from a dish to some dude’s head,” Parker says. via

These results potentially can do two things: explain why Vasospasms can exist sans bleeding in the brain and of course lead toward treatments.