The effects of repetitive head impacts on neurocognitive function
Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Introduction: There has been an increase in concern regarding the effects of sports related Repetitive Head Impacts (RHI) during contact and/or collision sport participation. Furthermore, the duration of an athlete’s participation in collision sports may present a “dose-response” effect whereby longer duration of play results in poorer cognitive function. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to utilize an established cognitive assessment, the Trail Making Test (TMT), to assess how neurocognitive functioning is affected by sport type played (i.e., collision, contact, and non-contact) and collision sport career duration. ☐ Methods: The TMT (TMT-A, TMT-B, TMT-Diff) completion times of collegiate student-athletes from two universities participating in non-contact, contact, and collision sports were utilized. A One-Way ANOVA compared TMT-A, TMT-B, and TMT-Diff times between non-contact, contact, and collision sport athletes and significant main effects were followed with Tukey post-hoc tests. A regression analysis was used to assess whether sports career duration predicted TMT performance. ☐ Results: There was a significant main effect for TMT-B and TMT-Diff. For the TMT-B, the collision sports group (43.8 + 13.0 sec) were significantly slower (p<0.001) than non-Contact (39.1 + 10.6 sec, d= 0.4). In the TMT-Diff score, the Collision sports group had a significantly larger difference (p = 0.001, d= 0.55) (23.4 + 11.6 sec) than the non-contact sport (17.6 + 9.2 sec). Years of sport participation was not a significant predictor for TMTA (p = 0.60, R2=0.0008), TMTB (p = 0.29, R2=0.003) or TMT-Diff performance (p = 0.17, R2=0.006). ☐ Conclusion: In conclusion the results suggest that career duration at the collegiate level may not be a predictor of neurocognitive performance. However, collision sports participation in college results in small (d= 0.4) but significant differences in cognitive function which raises concern about cognition across the lifespan. Future studies need to continue to monitor former contact and collision sports athletes as they age to identify potential neurophysiological effects of RHI and aging.
Description
Keywords
Concussion, Neurocogntive functioning, Repetitive Head Impacts, Trail Making Test, Sport athletes