Ex Vivo Connectomics of Traumatic Coma
Ex Vivo Connectomics of Traumatic Coma is a postmortem imaging and histopathological study of brain specimens from patients who die from severe traumatic brain injury.
The above figure shows traumatic hemorrhages in the brainstem of a patient who died from traumatic coma (panel A, arrows). This brainstem was scanned using an ultra-high resolution MRI technique before it was sectioned and stained for histopathological analysis. The MRI scan showed severe disruption of brainstem pathways in the coma patient (panel C), as compared to the intact pathways seen in a human control subject (panel D). Microscopic analysis of the patient's brainstem showed severe traumatic axonal injury (panel B, arrowheads), corresponding to sites of fiber tract disruption that were identified by postmortem MRI. Figure adapted from Edlow BL, Haynes RL, Takahashi E, Klein JP, Cummings P, Benner T, Greer DM, Greenberg SM, Wu O, Kinney HC*, Folkerth RD*. Disconnection of the ascending arousal system in traumatic coma. Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology. 2013;72:505-523. (*co-senior authors).
The primary goal of this study is to identify the circuits within the brainstem arousal network that are essential for recovery of consciousness after traumatic coma.
Secondary goals of this study include:
Validation of structural connectivity imaging (i.e. diffusion tractography) with gold-standard histopatholgical data
Development of a multimodal autopsy protocol that integrates ex vivo radiologic and histopathological data to advance knowledge about the neuroanatomic basis of coma and consciousness