Articles: traumatic-brain-injuries.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Mar 2017
Electrophysiological Correlates of Word Retrieval in Traumatic Brain Injury.
Persons who have had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) often have word retrieval deficits; however, the underlying neural mechanisms of such deficits are yet to be clarified. Previous studies in normal subjects have shown that during a word retrieval task, there is a 750 msec event-related potential (ERP) divergence detected at the left fronto-temporal region when subjects evaluate word pairs that facilitate retrieval compared with responses elicited by word pairs that do not facilitate retrieval. In this study, we investigated the neurophysiological correlates of word retrieval networks in 19 retired professional athletes with TBI and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects. ⋯ The EEG showed a significant group by condition interaction over the left fronto-temporal region. The HC group mean amplitudes were significantly different between conditions, but the TBI group data did not show this difference, suggesting neurophysiological effects of injury. These findings provide evidence that ERP amplitudes may be used as a marker of disrupted semantic retrieval circuits in persons with TBI even when those persons perform normally.
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Increased sport participation and sport-related concussion incidence has led to an emphasis on having an appropriate medical professional available to high school athletes. The medical professional best suited to provide medical care to high school athletes is a certified athletic trainer (AT). Access to an AT may influence the reporting of sport-related concussion in the high school athletic population; however, little is known about how the presence of an AT affects concussion knowledge, prevention, and recognition. ⋯ High school athletes with access to an AT had more concussion knowledge, but they did not report suspected concussions to an authority figure more frequently than athletes without access to an AT.
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Moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury is one of the strongest environmental risk factors for the development of neurodegenerative diseases such as late-onset Alzheimer's disease, although it is unclear whether mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, also confers risk. This study examined mild traumatic brain injury and genetic risk as predictors of reduced cortical thickness in brain regions previously associated with early Alzheimer's disease, and their relationship with episodic memory. Participants were 160 Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans between the ages of 19 and 58, many of whom carried mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder diagnoses. ⋯ Finally, analyses that examined the apolipoprotein E4 allele, post-traumatic stress disorder, and genetic risk for schizophrenia and depression confirmed the specificity of the Alzheimer's disease polygenic risk finding. These results provide evidence that mild traumatic brain injury is associated with greater neurodegeneration and reduced memory performance in individuals at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, with the caveat that the order of causal effects cannot be inferred from cross-sectional studies. These results underscore the importance of documenting head injuries even within the mild range as they may interact with genetic risk to produce negative long-term health consequences such as neurodegenerative disease.
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Neurorehabil Neural Repair · Mar 2017
Proactive Response Inhibition and Subcortical Gray Matter Integrity in Traumatic Brain Injury.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been associated with impairments in inhibiting prepotent motor responses triggered by infrequent external signals (ie, reactive inhibition). It is unclear whether proactive preparation to inhibit upcoming responses is also affected (ie, proactive inhibition). Successful inhibition relies on frontosubcortical interactions; therefore, impairments might be linked with gray matter atrophy in subcortical structures. ⋯ Our results reveal that proactive inhibition seems unaffected in TBI and that volume of subregions of subcortical nuclei is predictive for response inhibition proficiency and of clinical relevance in TBI.
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Journal of neurosurgery · Mar 2017
Impact of Glasgow Coma Scale score and pupil parameters on mortality rate and outcome in pediatric and adult severe traumatic brain injury: a retrospective, multicenter cohort study.
OBJECTIVE Prediction of death and functional outcome is essential for determining treatment strategies and allocation of resources for patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The aim of this study was to evaluate, by using pupillary status and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score, if patients with severe TBI who are ≤ 15 years old have a lower mortality rate and better outcome than adults with severe TBI. METHODS A retrospective cohort analysis of patients suffering from severe TBI registered in the Trauma Registry of the German Society for Trauma Surgery between 2002 and 2013 was undertaken. ⋯ CONCLUSIONS This study found that severe TBI in children aged ≤ 15 years is associated with a lower mortality rate and superior functional outcome than in adults. Also, children admitted with a missing motor response or fixed and bilaterally dilated pupils also have a lower mortality rate and higher functional outcome than adults with the same initial presentation. Therefore, patients suffering from severe TBI, especially pediatric patients, could benefit from early and aggressive treatment.