Co-Operative Studies on Brain Injury Depolarizations (COSBID)

COSBID is a research interest group focused on the causes and consequences of spreading depolarizations as a pathologic mechanism in neurologic diseases. The group started as a clinical research collaboration, and today those efforts have grown into several single and multi-center studies of brain injury resulting from trauma and various types of stroke. Presently, there are more than 12 hospitals in Europe and the United States that monitor spreading depolarizations in patients for both research and clinical purposes, and more centers are joining each year. In addition, experimental scientists study the mechanisms and consequences of spreading depolarizations in the laboratory using brain slice preparations and animal models of human disease. Techniques include intracellular recordings, two-photon microscopy, monitoring of cerebral blood flow and metabolism, and even mathematical modeling.