In 2003 CDC sent a report to Congress on “mild” traumatic brain injuries. (MTBI, also sometimes called “concussion.”) The report cautioned that, contrary to past understanding, “mild” brain injuries can cause serious, permanent problems:
“In recent decades, public health and health care communities have become increasingly aware that the consequences of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) may not, in fact, be mild. Epidemiologic research has identified MTBI as a public health problem of large magnitude, while clinical research has provided evidence that these injuries can cause serious, lasting problems.”
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
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
A review published in the September 2017 issue of Frontiers in Neurology proposes use of “systems science” to better understand concussion diagnosis and prognosis. This is a discipline that analyzes complex problems as whole systems and integrates research findings from different disciplines. In explaining the need for a systems approach, the reviewers note one description of concussion that is uniformly recognized – that it is a highly heterogeneous phenomenon, with numerous factors interacting dynamically to influence an individual’s recovery trajectory. (This concept is highlighted in the title of one of the Concussion WebCasts made available by the American Association of Family Physicians : “If you have seen one concussion, you have seen one concussion.”) Read More
The open source journal Brain Science has just published a survey of literature demonstrating that a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) , otherwise known as concussion, is a complex pathophysiological process that can have a systemic effect on the body aside from solely impairing cognitive function. According to the article, “dysfunction in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) has been found to be a major factor in the symptomatology in TBI, including in mTBI” and can “induce abnormalities in organ systems throughout the body.” Read More
One of the most common symptoms following TBI is photophobia, an intense intolerance to light that can cause significant discomfort, interfere with activities of daily living, and contribute to post traumatic headaches. It can impact the ability to work at computer screens and in well-lit offices and can cause a great deal of fatigue for patients who try to return to usual activities. Avoiding light can be very limiting. Read More
The May 16, 2017 issue of The American Journal of Sports Medicine highlights the significance of subtle changes in vision following concussion in predicting more prolonged recovery. The study found that a diagnosis of “convergence insufficiency” increased the odds of prolonged recovery by 12.3 fold. Read More
A topic frequently addressed in this blog is the building body of evidence showing that the minority of patients who have long term, sometimes permanent, symptoms following concussion typically experience those symptoms because of injury to the brain, not to achieve some “secondary gain.” Although scientists do not have a clear understanding about why some people are more vulnerable to these injuries, we know as discussed in prior posts, that certain factors can play a role, such as genetics, prior head injuries and a history of migraines. Two recently published studies contribute to our understanding that real pathology likely underlies most persistent symptoms and that this pathology can be identified with advanced neuroimaging techniques. Read More
