Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a widespread, devastating and difficult to treat medical condition initiated by complex biomechanical mechanisms. Rodent models of TBI are widely used to study the pathobiology, but data needed to fully characterize the mechanics of these injury models is lacking. In this study, the viscoelastic properties of specific regions of the rat brain were measured by microindentation of slices prepared in the horizontal anatomical plane. These data complement previously reported data acquired in the sagittal and coronal plane to provide insight into the anisotropy of region‐specific properties of the rat brain. As in the sagittal and coronal planes, brain properties in the horizontal plane were age, time and region dependent. There was evidence of anisotropy in the alveus and corpus callosum. These data will support the next generation of computational models of TBI that will yield greater understanding of its biomechanics.
Keywords:
Anisotropy, brain, properties, rat, viscoelastic