Over the past 20 years science has been able to get a handle on the visual effects of traumatic brain injury through refined and improved neuroimaging techniques. Even though many believe “information is power”, the gap between knowledge and treatment is increasing. Tens of thousands of Americans lie in nursing homes in comas and other diminished states resulting from traumatic brain injury. Thousands more will join them each year. Unfortunately the majority are at the mercy of a medical establishment ill equipped to assess their needs and provide treatment, according to several recent studies. Although there are many potential treatments in trials and studies globally, a paltry few are used as an established treatment measure. In the last decade scientists have learned that the brain doesn’t stop growing and can repair itself in a process that is still barely understood. This is why, with good therapy, people can learn to speak, eat and walk again. “The brain isn't a black box anymore - we know a lot about what's going on now with head injuries in patients who are comatose for days or weeks,” said Dalton Dietrich, a neurologist and scientific director at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. “We're way past the dark ages of brain and spinal cord injury [of] 20 years ago.” Doctors hold on to the promise that every brain is as unique as its injury. Scientists at the University of Miami and elsewhere are looking for new breakthrough treatments such as: stem cell treatment, deep brain stimulators used in Parkinson’s, artificial blood and hypothermia to retard trauma. Funding remains a problem, but it is an epidemic whose numbers have exceeded those of HIV/AIDS and breast cancer.