A Pennsylvania start-up company is developing techniques to allow doctors to see what is going on in the brain when it suffers an injury — without opening up the skull. When a serious brain injury occurs, brain cells are stunned with massive depolarization, which results in an “electrical storm” that is akin to a tidal wave tracking across the brain. The start-up company, CerebroScope, is developing a device that can detect these brain “storms” by using an noninvasive, EKG-like device that senses changes in the brain electrical system.

The hope is that, eventually, this technique can be used to diagnose concussions, which can affect up to 67,000 high school football players each year. At the present time, there is no medical device that is able to do that. Concussions cannot be diagnosed by blood tests, x-rays, or other scanning methods. The current methods of assessing cognitive changes, eye movements, and other signs are a crude way of trying to diagnose concussions.

The CerebroScope device would use dozens of electrical leads — like the ones used in EKG’s — to monitor the brain’s electrical activity. The leads would be attached to the scalp shortly after a suspected injury to determine if medical treatment is needed. The methods will be tested on humans in the near future at the University of New Mexico. Other institutions around the country are also focusing on research into diagnosing brain changes shortly after an injury occurs. The University of Cincinnati is working with others, including the University of Pittsburgh, in a similar effort funded by the Department of Defense. As one of the CerebroScope founders said, “concussion symptoms are all over the place; we know the brain short-circuits, but nobody knows how.” The hope is that the new devices and techniques will allow doctors to stop the tidal wave of cellular wreckage that comes with traumatic brain injuries.