Citation

Moore RD, Lepine J, Ellemberg D. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 2017; 112: 22-30.

Affiliation

Université de Montréal, Départment de Kinésiologie, 100 boul. Édouard-Montpetit, Montréal, Québec H3T 1J4, Canada. Electronic address: dave.ellemberg@umontreal.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.11.011

PMID

27867100

Abstract

Accumulating research demonstrates that repetitive sub-concussive impacts can alter the structure, function and connectivity of the brain. However, the functional significance of these alterations as well as the independent contribution of concussive and sub-concussive impacts to neurophysiological and neuropsychological health are unclear. Accordingly, we compared the neurophysiological and neuropsychological function of contact athletes with (concussion group) and without (sub-concussion group) a history of concussion, to non-contact athletes. We evaluated event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited during an oddball task and performance on a targeted battery of neuropsychological tasks. Athletes in the sub-concussion and concussion groups exhibited similar amplitude reductions in the ERP indices of attentional resource allocation (P3b) and attentional orienting (P3a) relative to non-contact athletes. However, only athletes in the concussion group exhibited reduced amplitude in the ERP index of perceptual attention (N1). Athletes in the sub-concussion and concussion groups also exhibited deficits in memory recall relative to non-contact athletes, but athletes in the concussion group also exhibited significantly more recall errors than athletes in the sub-concussion group. Additionally, only athletes in the concussion group exhibited response delays during the oddball task. The current findings suggest that sub-concussive impacts are associated with alterations in the neurophysiological and neuropsychological indices of essential cognitive functions, albeit to a lesser degree than the combination of sub-concussive and concussive impacts.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Concussion; ERPs; Neurophysiology; Neuropsychology; Sub-concussion