Objective Brain Function Assessment of mTBI/Concussion in College Athletes

Objective Brain Function Assessment of mTBI From Initial Injury to Rehabilitation and Treatment Optimization in College Athletes

This study (Part 1) is designed to build a database including EEG, neurocognitive performance, clinical symptoms, history and other relevant data, which will be used to derive a multimodal EEG based algorithm for the identification of concussion and tracking of recovery. In addition, neuroimaging will be conducted at time of injury and following Return to Play (RTP).

Injured/concussed subjects will be studied at time of injury, and at 3 follow-up time points following injury. Matched controls will be tested following the same schedule as the injured athletes. In addition, the study will include an additional pool of contact and non-contact athletes who are not head injured and will be assessed prior to the season and then after the season has ended. This data will be used to populate a database for the purpose of deriving a multimodal concussion index.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Concussion-Injury subjects will be defined as follows: Any player who, based on independent clinical impression, is suspected of having suffered a concussion of any severity level, and on whom a routine clinical examination for concussion or head injury would have been conducted prior to implementation of this research protocol according to current standard practice.

  1. If loss of consciousness, total duration less than <20 minutes
  2. No evidence of abnormality visible on Computerized Tomography (CT) of the head related to the traumatic event (Note: neuroimaging is not required for enrollment)
  3. No hospital admission due to either head injury or collateral injuries for >24 hours.
  4. GCS is between 13-15.

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Evidence of illicit drug usage
2. Do not speak or read English
3. Current CNS active prescription medications, with the exception of medications being taken for the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
4. Skull abnormalities, e.g. metal plate
5. History of brain surgery or neurological disease.