Researchers from Berkeley, Duke, UNC Chapel Hill and University of Arizona used a new type of MRI called “diffusion kurtosis imaging” (“DKI”) to take brain scans of 16 high school football players, ages 15 to 17, before and after a single season of football. DKI is an extension of Diffusion Tensor Imaging, (DTI) discussed in prior posts. Early studies suggest that it outperforms DTI in capturing certain microstructural changes in the brain. The football players who were scanned all wore helmets and none of them were diagnosed with a concussion. The researchers also measured head impact exposure during every practice and game using the Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) system, which has been widely used in other head impact studies. The study, which is the cover story of the November issue of the journal Neurobiology of Disease, is one of the first to look at how impact sports affect the brains of children at this age.
There’s promising research on the use of melatonin for acute treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and for treatment of sleep disturbance following TBI coming from two recent peer-reviewed papers. One, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, reviews the literature and performs meta-analyses of the data in studies examining the use of melatonin shortly after injury.
A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association adds to a growing body of evidence pointing to traumatic brain injuries, of all levels of severity, as an important risk factor for suicide.
The significance of the study is discussed in an opinion in the same issue of JAMA. Both the increased risk of suicide and the prevalence of depression following TBI have been discussed in prior posts in this blog. Read More
In our May, 2014 post, we reported on research showing that traumatic brain injury, including mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), can damage and cause dysfunction in the pituitary gland resulting in deficiencies in key hormones released by the pituitary gland, such as Growth Hormone (GH). As we explained in that post, the anatomy of the pituitary gland makes it particularly susceptible to the sheering injuries seen in TBI. The pituitary gland, which is housed in a bony structure at the base of the skull, controls the function of most other endocrine glands and is therefore sometimes called the “master gland.” Read More
Research scientists at the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas have just published a study, funded by the US Department of Defense, supporting the effectiveness of “strategy-based” cognitive training at reducing symptoms of depression commonly found in patients with chronic (greater than 6 months) traumatic brain injury (TBI) symptoms.
The training was an integrative program designed to improve cognitive control by exerting more efficient thinking strategies for selective attention and abstract reasoning. The training did not directly target psychiatric symptoms such as depression, but was nonetheless effective at reducing those symptoms. Read More
Although prior studies of the association between mTBI and dementia have been mixed, this study, among the largest epidemiological studies to date, adds to the weight of evidence suggesting that even mild TBI is associated with an increased dementia diagnosis risk. Read More
Although males represent a majority of emergency department visits for sports and recreation-related concussion, researchers have recently found that female athletes have a higher rate of concussion and appear to have worse outcomes than their male counterparts participating in the same sport. University of Pennsylvania researchers have recently identified anatomical differences between male and female axons that may explain this increased vulnerability. Read More
Canadian researchers assessed 236 individuals diagnosed with traumatic brain injury at 4, 8 and 12 months following injury. The results confirm prior studies showing that depression in very prevalent following TBI. Read More
As discussed in prior posts on this blog, sleep alterations are commonly found after a concussion or other traumatic brain injury, both short term and in some cases long term. One of the most well documented impacts of concussion, also discussed in prior posts, is an increased risk of mood disturbances, including depression, increased anxiety and increased risk of suicide. In recent years researchers have turned to sleep studies to explore the connection between these symptoms.
There is substantial evidence in the literature of the role healthy sleep plays in the “consolidation” of emotional memories. At first blush, this research is counter-intuitive. If sleep “consolidates” emotional memories, doesn’t this have the potential to increase rather than decrease mood disturbance? The answer appears to be that, although sleep preserves memory of events associated with emotional experience, at the same time it weakens the emotional “charge” coating the experience (referred to in the literature as “valence”) in a process called “habituation.” As one researcher hypothesized, “we sleep to forget the emotional tone, yet sleep to remember the tagged information.”Read More
Several of my traumatic brain injury (TBI) clients have been treated for gut issues – issues that were not present prior to their TBI. Insurers, of course, insist that this treatment cannot be related to the brain injury. The scientific literature indicates otherwise. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine recently found a two-way link between TBI and intestinal changes.
The findings indicate that this two way interaction may contribute to increased infections in TBI patients and may also worsen chronic brain damage. Read More
