News Release — Free PDFDownload your free copy of a highly authoritative book on traumatic brain injury
We're announcing the recent completion of our traumatic brain injury book, entitled "Your Brain After Impact" — an authoritative source on the science and clinical manifestations of mild traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome, by Mike Pappolla, MD, PhD, and Remi Nader, MD. 382 pages, 15 chapters in four parts. Download your free copy as our appreciation for visiting the site.
Complimentary download — no sign-up required. 382 pages, 4 MB.
What makes this book different
Many books summarize the field. This one also contributes to it. Alongside a rigorous synthesis of the current science of traumatic brain injury, the book presents the authors' own peer-reviewed research — the studies that underpin its clinical judgments, woven directly into the chapters rather than appended as an afterthought. Those papers have been published in reputable journals and praised by experts in the field, an endorsement of the science that goes above and beyond many books available in this area — and one that needs nothing else to make the book an authoritative source for anyone handling this condition.
The appendices make that evidence transparent: Appendix A presents six papers central to the book, with their published abstracts and links to the complete open-access articles, so readers can follow the evidence and judge its strengths and limits for themselves.
Chapters the authors ask you not to skip
Four chapters carry particular educational weight — for clinicians building their knowledge and for attorneys who need the medicine exactly right.
Diagnosing traumatic brain injury
The clinical core: mechanism-based classification, the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine criteria, competing diagnostic frameworks — and why the correct diagnosis matters.
Diagnostic challenges of mild traumatic brain injury
Why mild TBI is so often missed in acute settings — retrospective diagnosis, confounding factors, ancillary testing, and the clinical and forensic pitfalls of contested cases.
An introduction to objective testing
What objective testing can and cannot establish: eye movements, balance, brain electrical activity, and brain structure — measuring what the routine examination cannot when scans look normal.
Persistent post-concussion symptoms and the neurocognitive gap
The condition at the center of so many disputed claims and difficult recoveries: the definitional debate, what the formal criteria require, and the full clinical syndrome — cognitive and non-cognitive.
A word on Chapter 10
Persistent post-concussion syndrome is among the most contested and misunderstood diagnoses in medicine. Chapter 10 takes it head-on: the scale of the definitional disagreement, the withdrawal of the diagnosis from DSM-5 and ICD-11, what the formal criteria still require — and the authors' own peer-reviewed research on persistent post-concussion symptoms, published in leading journals, distilled into guidance readers can rely on.
Written for two audiences
Most books on traumatic brain injury are written for one reader. This one serves two — and each will find real, practical value in it.
For attorneys
Case preparation demands command of the medicine. The book gives attorneys a rigorous, citable grounding in how TBI is diagnosed and graded, why standard imaging so often fails to tell the whole story, and how imaging reports, neuropsychological testing, and pain evaluations are read in contested cases. Appendix B supplies a structured intake for retrospective assessment that can be put to immediate use.
For physicians
Stay current on the clinical science of traumatic brain injury — the 2023 ACRM diagnostic criteria and the 2025 medicolegal clarification, objective multimodal testing of eye movements, balance, brain electrical activity, and brain structure, the full range of consequences, and a complete, evidence-based approach to treatment and recovery in Part IV.
The appendices
Three appendices extend the book well beyond its chapters. Appendix A presents the research behind the book — six of the authors' papers with their published abstracts and links to the complete open-access articles. Appendix B provides a structured intake for the retrospective assessment of traumatic brain injury, ready for clinical and medicolegal use. Appendix C sets out the ACRM criteria and their application to retrospective diagnosis.
About the authors
Miguel (Mike) Pappolla, MD, PhD, is an internationally recognized neurologist and interventional pain specialist, board certified in neurology, neuropathology, and pain medicine, with more than four decades of experience in clinical care, research, and teaching. He is Professor of Neurology at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He is joined by co-author Remi Nader, MD, a board-certified neurosurgeon and faculty member in the Department of Neurosurgery at UTMB, whose published work includes concussion management and new approaches to traumatic brain injury.
Meet Dr. Pappolla