  Extensive research has been carried out for at least 50 years to understand
the mechanical properties of brain tissue in order to understand the mechanisms
of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The observed large variability in experimental
results may be due to the inhomogeneous nature of brain tissue and to the broad
range of test conditions. However, test temperature is also considered as one
of the factors influencing the properties of brain tissue. In this research,
the mechanical properties of porcine brain have been investigated at 22C (room
temperature) and at 37C (body temperature) while maintaining a constant
preservation temperature of approximately 4-5C. Unconfined compression tests
were performed at dynamic strain rates of 30 and 50/s using a custom made test
apparatus. There was no significant difference (p = 0.8559 - 0.9290) between
the average engineering stresses of the brain tissue at the two different
temperature conditions. The results of this study should help to understand the
behavior of brain tissue at different temperature conditions, particularly in
unconfined compression tests.
