Effect of Neck Muscle Strength and Passive Cervical Viscoelasticity on Regional Brain and Axonal Tissue Response

Increasing passive cervical viscoelasticity from D25 to D95 in an MRI-derived human head-neck finite element model reduces mean regional 95th-percentile predicted axonal strain by 35% under inertial loading and 33% under frontal loading.

• Why it matters: Neck mechanical properties may strongly shape brain motion and tissue-level strain during rapid head loading, yet their relative contributions and interaction effects remain unclear.
• What they did: A 4×4 factorial simulation varied muscle strength (S25–S95) and passive ligament/disc viscoelasticity (D25–D95) across 16 cervical configurations, using 15 g inertial loading and a 7000 N frontal impact.
• The result: Passive viscoelasticity also lowered brain center-of-mass angular acceleration by 16% and 13%, and decreased regional intracranial pressure by 9%~21% (inertial) and 5%~12% (frontal), with effects depending on muscle strength.

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