Neural Mechanism of Cerebrocardiac Syndrome Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Cerebrocardiac syndrome (CCS), including myocardial injury, arrhythmia or heart failure is one of serious complications of traumatic brain injury (TBI), mostly occurs within seven days after TBI, which directly aggravates the brain damage and affects the prognosis of TBI patients. Accumulative evidences suggest that autonomic nervous system disorder is a key initiation point for CCS, but how TBI affects the specific action patterns is not yet clear. Therefore, elucidating the neural mechanisms of TBI-induced CCS, maintaining the central sympathetic-parasympathetic balance through novel interventions such as noninvasive brain stimulation, may fundamentally block the downstream peripheral mechanism, thus achieving effective prevention and treatment for CCS. Based on the current emerging research in brain connectomics and lesion-symptom mapping, we speculate that cerebral contusions can cause structural or functional disconnection of key nodes in the central autonomic nervous system regulatory network, thereby mediating the occurrence of TBI-induced CCS.

In this study, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or functional MRI (fMRI) examinations were performed in patients with mild or moderate TBI with aim to explore the association between structural and functional disconnection caused by cerebral contusion and TBI-induced CCS, and to screen out the neural anatomical structures to predict CCS following TBI, providing therapy targets for prevention and treatment of CCS.