Long-Term Effects of Concussion on Motor Performance Across the Lifespan.

High School;mTBI;chronic;Kinesiology and Sports;Health Sciences;Kinesiology

Martini, Douglas N.Meehan, Sean ;

University of Michigan

关键词: High School;    mTBI;    chronic;    Kinesiology and Sports;    Health Sciences;    Kinesiology;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/113411/dnmart_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

This dissertation aims to provide critical insight into the possible long-term effects of concussion on motor and cognitive performance, through a set of cross-sectional investigations. To date, the elite athlete population has garnered most of the research and public attention, while the largest athletic population, high school athletes, has been largely overlooked. The hypotheses state that individuals with a concussion history will have worse cognitive and motor performance and that this trend will be divergent with age. That is, the previously concussed individuals will exhibit worse performance, and will be divergently worse from the control group with age. With this in mind, the three investigations focus on cognitive and motor performance in three age groups (i.e. 20, 40, and 60 year olds), in those with and without an adolescent concussion history. The first investigation assessed cognition between concussion history and control groups, within age groups. Using a standard computer-based, clinical concussion assessment, processing speed, attention, learning, working memory accuracy and working memory speed were quantified for each concussion group by age. There were no differences between the concussion history and control groups, within age. The second investigation assessed gait spatio-temporal, kinematic, and toe clearance variables. Again, no significant concussion history group differences were observed in the multivariate assessment for the gait spatio-temporal, kinematic, and toe clearance variables. In addition, there appeared to be no pattern suggesting that a concussion history adversely affects gait, across age. The final investigation assessed skill acquisition, implicitlearning, and the internal timing mechanism between concussion history and control groups, within age. Again, there was no consistent pattern to suggest an adverse relationship between concussion history and motor performance, across age. Considering this set of observations, there does not appear to be a long-term, negative relationship between adolescent concussion history and cognition or motor performance in this population.