Clinically specific forms of brain injury including, cerebral concussion (mild, moderate, and severe), diffuse axonal injury with prolonged coma, and acute subdural hematoma have been programmably reproduced in a laboratory setting.

Three different devices were employed to produce controlled kinematics associated with inertial loading of the head in approximately 150 primate experiments. These kinematical conditions are presented together with a Fourier transform of the acceleration / time history of the inertial load in order to correlate those conditions which relate to the various forms of brain injury.

In most cases an angular acceleration of the head describes the kinematical conditions. The axis of rotation, center of rotation, direction of the head motion, acceleration magnitude and acceleration wave shape were varied independently while the brain mass of primate was dependent upon species (25 to 200 grams).

Injury to the neural and neurovascular tissue components of the brain depend synergistically upon the tissue failure criteria for these elements and the variation in the field parameters as they relate to the macroscopic loading conditions.