Citation

Dettwiler A, Murugavel M, Putukian M, Cubon V, Furtado J, Osherson D. J. Neurotrauma 2014; 31(2): 180-188.

Affiliation

Princeton University, Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Green Hall, Princeton, New Jersey, United States, 08544, 609-462-4294 ; adettwil@princeton.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Mary Ann Liebert Publishers)

DOI

10.1089/neu.2013.2983

PMID

23914845

Abstract

Avoiding recurrent injury in sports-related concussion (SRC) requires understanding the neural mechanisms involved during the time of recovery after injury. The decision for return-to-play is one of the most difficult responsibilities facing the physician, and so far this decision has been primarily based on neurological examination, symptom checklists, and neuropsychological (NP) testing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may be an additional, more objective tool to assess the severity and recovery of function after concussion. The purpose of this study was to define neural correlates of SRC during the 2 months following injury in varsity contact sport athletes who suffered a SRC. All athletes were scanned as they performed an n-back task, for n = 1, 2, 3. Subjects were scanned within 72 hours (session one) at two weeks (session two) and two months (session three) post injury. Compared to age and gender matched normal controls, concussed subjects demonstrated persistent, significantly increased activation for the 2 minus 1 n-back contrast in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in all three sessions and in the inferior parietal lobe in session one and two (α ≤ 0.01 corrected). Measures of task performance revealed no significant differences between concussed versus control groups at any of the three time points with respect to any of the three n-back tasks. These findings suggest that functional brain activation differences persist at 2 months after injury in concussed athletes, despite the fact that their performance on a standard working memory task is comparable to normal controls and normalization of clinical and NP test results. These results might indicate a delay between neural and behaviorally assessed recovery after SRC.

Language: en