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DIFFUSE AXONAL INJURY (DAI) is a brain injury characterized by prolonged traumatic coma not due to mass lesions that has dysfunction or structural damage to brain axons. DAI can be produced by inertial loading of the head in a centroidal or non-centroidal manner. This paper compares the effect of varying the direction of head movement on the severity of DAI. Three groups of 13 monkeys are presented, each subjected to a single non-impact distributed inertial acceleration pulse with head motion constrained to a single plane. In groups 1 and 3, non-centroidal acceleration was produced in the sagittal (rotation about the y axis) and coronal (about the x axis) planes respectively, with the center of rotation in the lower cervical spine. Group 2 was subjected to centroidal acceleration in the horizontal plane (z axis). Deceleration pulse duration (6-8 msec), peak angular deceleration (1-2 × 105 rad/sec2) and angular velocity (475-510 rad/sec) were comparable in each group.