Collaborations Concussion
The objective of these studies is to develop objective measures of brain health that are sensitive to mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI or concussion). Concussion often results in increased cerebral cortical baseline activity which results in changes in central information processing. Protocols used for this study target detection of changes in neural transmission mediated by both GABAergic and NMDA receptor systems, and by neuron-glial interactions. The figure below exemplifies a multi-parametric approach of assessments of concussed vs. non-concussed individuals. Using this multi-parametric method, we currently have a 99% confidence level (via Hotelling's t-square statistic) in differentiating these two groups.
In our ongoing concussion studies, a battery of multiple tests are collected from concussed subjects. Some of these perceptual metrics are robust and show significant differences between concussed and non-concussed (or recovered) individuals, such as the data plotted at the right. Other metrics are more sensitive to variables such as location of the impact to the head. The two graphs below (Metrics 1 and Metrics 2) demonstrate significant differences between subjects concussed by an impact to the front of the head and control values (values from subjects not impacted on the front of the head). Although there are differences in the results of the individual metrics for each subject, multiparametric analysis (above) of 5 of the independent metrics reveals significant differences between the control and concussed populations.
Combining 3 metrics leads to a differentiation of concussed vs. non-concussed data, regardless of where the impact was.