A computational model of mild traumatic brain injury

Electrical analysis of brain activity reveals the presence of synchronous oscillations over a range of frequencies. These rhythms are readily observed using electroencephalography (EEG). Clinical EEG data shows that Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) alters these rhythms. Researchers have developed lumped parameter neural mass models (NMM) that can reproduce these various brain rhythms. This paper proposes an NMM based computational model of mild TBI that recreates the clinical EEG changes observed after injury. Specifically, the focus is on recreating changes observed after TBI in the 8-12 Hz alpha and the 4-8Hz theta frequency ranges. Mild TBI is simulated by increasing membrane reactivity and by decreasing synaptic connectivity in the NMM. These results indicate that clinically observed EEG changes with mild TBI are likely due to traumatic synaptic disruption and that with appropriate data, EEG may be used to quantify the extent of TBI in the future.