If the article title doesn’t say this is the yolk of an egg, you probably won’t know what this spinning yellow matter is. Initially, it looked like a potato that had been squeezed loose with some magic.
But scientists say they are spinning these eggs to study something seemingly unrelated: Traumatic brain injury in humans.
This “magic” egg yolk mass is helping scientists understand traumatic brain injury.
In fact, our skulls are not as hollow as people think. There is always an opening between the brain and skull, but it is filled with a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid . This fluid is responsible for protecting the brain from friction against the skull. At the same time, it does a second more important task of absorbing the force of impact on the brain.
Just as an egg yolk needs to float among the thick, viscous whites, your brain is kept suspended in the cerebrospinal fluid. That’s because even a gentle force like walking can cause your brain to vibrate up and down with each step.
When faced with a sudden blow, the brain will be jerked to one side at an amazing speed. It can be squeezed and bounced against the skull wall, or even twisted and left with a lot of serious damage.
That’s what happens in the event you get hit in the head, fall from a car, or have a traumatic brain injury. But what exactly happens to the brain in that moment of impact? How will it move?
When encountering a sudden blow, the brain will be jerked to one side as shown.
To find out, scientists have previously used a variety of dummies to study the biomechanical process of traumatic brain injury. They can also recruit volunteers to wear helmets with motion sensors or computer models that simulate the human brain.
But now, a team of scientists at Villanova University have come up with a more creative way: using eggs.
The idea arose when Qianhong Wu, an engineer in the Villanova team, was preparing to whip eggs for home cooking. He saw the egg yolks floating inside the white mass and wondered: Why not use them to study the movement of a mass of soft matter inside a liquid medium? Because that’s also how our brains are kept in the cerebrospinal fluid.
“Critical thinking, along with simple experiments in the kitchen, led us to a series of systematic studies to examine the mechanisms that cause egg yolk distortion,” said Qianhong Wu. said.
The egg yolk is suspended inside the white mass just as our brains are kept in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Although their approach is a bit unconventional, the results of this study also help us understand how brain tissues, such as a mass of soft matter, can shift and deform when exposed to light. external force.
The more we know and understand about this mechanism, the more researchers can improve car safety systems and design better helmets for motorcyclists and athletes. play extreme sports to prevent and limit injury.
When it comes to traumatic brain injury, people often imagine horror scenes in which a traffic accident victim lies on the road with his head broken and a pool of blood underneath. But actually traumatic brain injury is not always so serious.
The most common form of traumatic brain injury is a mild traumatic brain injury , also known as a concussion . This is an English term that comes from a Latin word meaning “to shake violently”.
These concussions can silently cause damage inside the brain, then.
Studies show that even a slight head impact, such as when you trip, hit your head against a wall, bump your head against a low ceiling or have an accident with a football on the field, can cause a concussion. actions that you sometimes don’t notice afterwards.
These concussions can silently cause damage inside the brain, which can then even kill you with a stroke. So studying what can happen after a concussion is a very important goal in medicine.
As early as the 1940s, scientists noticed a phenomenon that the brain can rotate after a linear impact , such as from a punch to the chin. When the brain is struck against the skull wall, the rebound force can be redirected, causing the brain to rotate and twist.
This twisting motion is difficult to measure precisely, because we can’t look inside the brain to see how the force might cause them to rotate.
In this study, Qianhong Wu set out to find that out by measuring the physical characteristics of an egg yolk and its outer membrane. Then, he put the egg in a transparent box and applied different forces on it, to simulate the many concussions that can happen to the brain.
The experiment measures the physical characteristics of the egg yolk and its outer membrane.
“To deform the egg yolks, we will try to shake and rotate them as quickly as possible,” the team said. They then only need to observe how the egg yolk compresses and expands to visualize what might happen to a brain in the event of an external force.
The results show that when the external force produces only translational motion, the egg yolk can quickly recover from the blow. But when an external force caused rotation, the egg yolk was ” horribly” deformed, the team wrote.
” We suspect that the rotational impact, especially the deceleration during rotation, is more harmful to the brain ,” says Qianhong Wu. This is consistent with previous studies that also showed rotation of the brain to be a better indicator of traumatic brain injury risk than linear acceleration.
Research shows that brain injury is a very complex type of trauma.
This is especially important in diagnostics. Because many cases of concussion happen silently without any symptoms.
If doctors interviewed the patient and found that his brain might have rotated after a non-frontal impact, they could keep the patient in the hospital for observation instead of sending him home. home. This can save the patient’s life if complications of a concussion occur.
New research by scientists from Villanova University once again shows us that brain injury is a very complex type of trauma. But we can also learn them, through very simple tools, such as an egg.
All of this innovative research has been published in the journal Physics of Fluids.