The Effects of Youth Football on the Developing Brain: A Multi-Modal Neuroimaging Study

Football players can experience hundreds of head impacts during a single season without sustaining a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). There is a growing concern regarding the association between later-life neurodegenerative disease development and earlier life head injury. This association is linked to the combination of recurrent mTBI and repetitive subconcussive head impacts (RHI). Many approaches exist to evaluate the effect of RHI on the brain include advanced neuroimaging, biomechanical assessment, and neuropsychological testing. mTBI and RHI have been evaluated in high school, collegiate, and professional sports, but limited data are available for the youth age group (8-13 years old). Hence, the overall topic of this dissertation is to evaluate RHI across a season of contact American football. Previous contact sport studies of high school and collegiate athletes have shown that advanced neuroimaging techniques, such as diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), can reveal subtle changes in brain structure and function caused by RHI. Our long-term goal is to expand this work and develop a novel neuroimaging-based monitoring protocol for both subconcussive and concussive head impacts to enhance brain health in the pediatric population. These methods have the potential to enlighten future clinical management and biomarker development. This dissertation will compare biomechanical data to advanced non-invasive neuroimaging measures to better understand the effects of RHI in youth football players. The dissertation hypothesis is that RHI will lead to changes in brain structure and function. To gain a deeper understanding of the effects of RHI on brain health, our analysis will involve comparing RHI with neuroimaging measures, exploring network connectivity, and examining how RHI may modulate the relationship between function and structural neuroimaging measures. This dissertation is partitioned across 3 main parts. Specific Aim 1. Compare MEG and DKI metrics to biomechanical measures of RHI across a single season of youth football. Specific Aim 2: Evaluate the effects RHI has on the relationship between MEG and DKI data. Specific Aim 3: Analyze functional connectivity metrics across a single season of football. The highlighted methods and results encompassed in this dissertation contributes to the medical community by informing potential neuroimaging protocols in the future that could be used in RHI monitoring.

Author dc:creator

• Bell, Natalie Marie

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vinogradov, Elena
• Davenport, Elizabeth
• Maldjian, Joseph A.
• Proskovec, Amy
• Yu, Fang
• Urban, Jillian

• Adolescent
• Brain Concussion
• Education, Early Childhood
• Craniocerebral Trauma
• Football
• Head Injuries, Closed

Language dc:language

en

Identifier

1482731948

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:tdl-ir.tdl.org:2152.5/10464