Program Summary
Previous efforts to understand brain injuries that result from nonkinetic explosive effects have focused only on a single explanation—blast overpressure. Improvised explosive device (IED)-induced injuries in Iraq, however, do not fit this hypothesis. Evidence indicates that traumatic brain injuries unique to blast exposure do not exhibit typical overpressure injuries, such as damage to gas-filled organs like lungs and bowel. DARPA’s Preventing Violent Explosive Neurologic Trauma (PREVENT) program is comprehensively evaluating the physics of the interaction between an IED blast and the brain and has identified which blast components are associated with neurologic injury.
The initial phase of the program has comprehensively evaluated the physics of interaction between an IED blast and the neurological system and has determined which components are causally associated with neurologic injury. Areas of research include:
- Addressing the mechanisms of explosive blast injury at the molecular and macroscopic scales, including but not limited to cellular, tissue level, organ level, and organ system level.
- Characterizing the injury over the pathophysiological evolution that ranges from primary injury as a direct result of the insult, to the consequent secondary pathophysiological cascade, extending beyond biogenic responses into psychogenic outcomes.
- Isolating the spectrum of physical mechanisms in explosion environments and determining their coupled effects on the central nervous system.
The program also will develop test systems and predictive models that will characterize blast exposure to optimize treatment paradigms, explosive blast mitigation, and protective strategies.