This review focuses on the potential for traumatic brain injury to evoke both focal and diffuse changes within the brain parenchyma, while considering the cellular constituents involved and the subcellular perturbations that contribute to their dysfunction. New insight is provided on the pathobiology of traumatically induced cell body injury and diffuse axonal damage. The consequences of axonal...

Due to their viscoelastic nature, white matter axons are susceptible to damage by high strain rates produced during traumatic brain injury (TBI). Indeed, diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is one of the most common features of TBI, characterized by the hallmark pathological profiles of axonal bulbs at disconnected terminal ends of axons and periodic swellings along axons, known as "varicosities." Alth...

The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Abstract Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is linked to a diverse range of diffuse pathological damage for which there is a severe lack of therapeutic options. A major limitation to drug development is the inability to identify causal mechanisms that link head trauma to the mu...

Even if βAPP remains the gold standard in identifying diffuse axonal injuries, other histological, ultrastructure, histochemical, or immunohistochemical markers may aid the diagnosis and may better characterize this traumatic brain pathology. Moreover, associated changes, including neuronal body changes, the presence of microglial clusters, and so on, when identified in a traumatic context, sho...