Citation

Smoliga JM. Lancet Neurol. 2018; 17(6): 500-501.

Affiliation

Department of Physical Therapy, High Point University, High Point, NC 27262, USA. Electronic address: jsmoliga@highpoint.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/S1474-4422(18)30157-1

PMID

29778361

Abstract

The rapidly evolving understanding of the long-term dangers of concussion and repeated sub-concussive impacts has created a sense of urgency towards the prevention of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and tau pathology (eg, chronic traumatic encephalopathy). One innovative proposal for protecting the brain is that of woodpecker biomimicry—a concept that gained attention following a 1976 publication by Philip May and colleagues.1 As this idea has re-emerged in the past decade and received considerable publicity,2 it is imperative to critically appraise the clinical relevance of the woodpecker's evolutionary adaptations.

While it is tempting to emulate selected features of the woodpecker skull's specialised bone structures3 in protective equipment, such biomimicry is unrealistically simplistic. Unlike humans incurring TBI, woodpeckers do not directly impact their heads, but rather impact highly-specialised beaks that dissipate force before it is transmitted to the skull.4 Additionally, woodpeckers have a highly specialised hyoid bone and tongue structure, which also contributes to shock dissipation.4 In addition to the impact itself in TBI, angular acceleration has been proposed to cause high tensile and shear stress or strain rates on brain tissue, which in turn might increase intracranial pressure in human beings.5 Conversely, woodpecker drumming is chiefly a linear motion,6 and thus does not replicate this potential contributor of brain damage in TBI in human beings ...

Language: en