Citation

Leeds DD, D'Lauro C, Johnson BR. Mil. Med. 2019; 184(Suppl 1): 206-217.

Affiliation

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Center for Military Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 503 Robert Grant Ave, Silver Spring, MD.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Association of Military Surgeons of the United States)

DOI

10.1093/milmed/usy415

PMID

30901472

Abstract

Subconcussive head injuries are connected to both short-term cognitive changes and long-term neurodegeneration. Further study is required to understand what types of subconcussive impacts might prove detrimental to cognition. We studied cadets at the US Air Force Academy engaged in boxing and physical development, measuring head impact motions during exercise with accelerometers. These head impact measures were compared with post-exercise memory performance. Investigators explored multiple techniques for characterizing the magnitude of head impacts. Boxers received more head impacts and achieved lower performance in post-exercise memory than non-boxers. For several measures of impact motion, impact intensity appeared to set an upper bound on post-exercise memory performance - stronger impacts led to lower expected memory performance. This trend was most significant when impact intensity was measured through a novel technique, applying principal component analysis to boxer motion. Principal component analysis measures also captured more distinct impact information than seven traditional impact measures also tested.

© Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2019. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Language: en

Keywords

Concussion; Head impact measures; Memory; Principal Component Analysis