Little is known about which components of the axonal cytoskeleton might break during rapid
mechanical deformation, such as occurs in traumatic brain injury. Here, we micropatterned
neuronal cell cultures on silicone membranes to induce dynamic stretch exclusively of axon …

Due to their viscoelastic nature, white matter axons are susceptible to damage by high strain
rates produced during traumatic brain injury (TBI). Indeed, diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is one
of the most common features of TBI, characterized by the hallmark pathological profiles of …

The brain remains one of the most important but least understood tissues in our body, in part
because of its complexity as well as the limitations associated with in vivo studies. Although
simpler tissues have yielded to the emerging tools for in vitro 3D tissue cultures, functional …

The reliability of chronic, brain‐penetrating electrodes must be improved for these‐neural
recording technologies to be viable in widespread clinical applications. One approach to
improving electrode reliability is to reduce the foreign body response at the probe‐tissue …

Tunable protein composites are important for constructing extracellular matrix mimics of
human nerve tissues with control of charge, structural, and mechanical properties. Molecular
interaction mechanisms between silk fibroin protein and recombinant human tropoelastin …

As a common feature of many neurological diseases and injury, the loss of axon pathways
can have devastating effects on function. Here, we demonstrate a new strategy to restore
damaged axon pathways using transplantable miniature constructs consisting of living …

This work describes a method to bond patterned macromolecular gels into monolithic
structures using perturbants. Bonding strengths for a variety of solutes follow a Hofmeister
ordering; this result and optical measurements indicate that bonding occurs by reversible …

Traumatic axonal injury (TAI) is the most common and important pathology of traumatic brain
injury (TBI). However, little is known about potential indirect effects of TAI on dendrites. In
this study, we used a well-established in vitro model of axonal stretch injury to investigate …

A bioengineered model of 3D brain-like tissue was developed using silk-collagen protein
scaffolds seeded with primary cortical neurons. The scaffold design provides
compartmentalized control for spatial separation of neuronal cell bodies and neural …

Neural engineering provides promise for cell therapy by integrating the host brain with brain–
machine‐interface technologies in order to externally modulate functions. Long‐term
interfaces with the host brain remain a critical challenge due to insufficient graft cell …