Brain Helmets Debut in museum   Forty-five students from Parkland Middle School in Rockville, Md. were given multiuse sports helmets designed to look like a brain during a Brain Awareness Week program held at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Also receiving the free helmets courtesy of The Lynn Fund, which receives support from the Defense Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), were 90 students from Blessed Sacrament School, Bolling Area Home Educators, and Holy Trinity School, all in Washington, D.C. The helmets are part of the “Use Your Brain” project that operates with the goal of raising awareness and preventing traumatic brain injury (TBI). The helmet meets Consumer Product Safety Commission standards. TBI is the result of a blow to the head that causes the brain to move around violently in the skull. This can often result in serious damage-- bleeding, tearing and swelling-- to brain tissue and nerves. Warren Lux, deputy director of the DVBIC at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, says the brain has a consistency similar to Jell-O. "If you just whip this around in space, you would stretch and tear those nerve fibers," Lux says. "That's what the core injury is in traumatic brain injury."The helmets were given to all participants in Friday’s program. The Lynn Fund plans to continue to give away the helmets at bicycle and skateboarding meets and other athletic venues where falling is common. The helmets will also be given away at church and school fundraisers, community events and police and fire departments. To receive more information on the “Use Your Brain” helmet project visit www.thelynnfund.org or www.dvbic.org. Alice Marie Stevens, education coordinator for the DVBIC, said, “We are pleased that our first helmet event was during Brain Awareness Week at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, at our headquarters, Walter Reed Army Medical Center. If the overwhelming enthusiasm and interest from the NMHM event continues, then this project will be very successful.”