NEWS

[2010-07-27]
insciencesorg- Concussion in athletes can affect mental and physical processes 30 years later

Concussion in athletes can affect mental and physical processes 30 years later

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Researchers from the Université de Montréal have found the first evidence that athletes who were concussed during their earlier sporting life show a decline in their mental and physical processes more than 30 years later, according a study published in Brain.

Louis De Beaumont, a graduate student at the Université de Montréal’s Department of Psychology and Centre de recherche en neuropsychologie et cognition, under the supervision of Neuropsychology Professor Maryse Lassonde, compared 19 healthy, former athletes who had sustained concussions more than 30 years ago with 21 healthy, former athletes with no history of concussion. The study found that those who had been concussed only once or twice in their early adulthood showed a decline in their attention and memory and a slowing of some of their movements compared to athletes who had no concussion. Until now, most research into concussion and its effects has concentrated on the immediate, post-concussion period and on improving decisions about when it is safe for an athlete to return to play. Any potential long-term effects of concussion tended to be over-looked.





Athletes can be vulnerable to head injuries
“This study shows that the effects of sports concussions in early adulthood persist beyond 30 years post-concussion and that it can cause cognitive and motor function alterations as the athletes age,” says first author Louis De Beaumont. “In the light of these findings, athletes should be better informed about the cumulative and persistent effects of sports concussion on mental and physical processes so that they know about the risks associated with returning to their sport.”

The research team recruited participants between the ages of 50 and 60; former university-level athletes who were still fit and healthy and who continued to engage in some form of regular physical activity at least three times a week. The former athletes answered questionnaires on their general health and on their history of concussion. Their mental and physical processes were investigated with a variety of tests, including:
• The Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE), which tests orientation, attention, immediate and short-term recall, language and the ability to follow simple verbal and written commands;
• Neuropsychological tests to detect episodic memory and attention/executive functions alterations, including aspects such as incidental learning and visual memory;
• Transcranial magnetic stimulation tests and tests of the brain’s response to external stimulus (known as event-related potentials);
• A test of motor control involving repeating at maximum speed a rotation of two hand-held spheres.

Results showed that, relative to former athletes with no history of concussion, those who had sustained their last sports concussion more than 30 years ago had:
• Lower memory performance on neuropsychological tests and response inhibition;
• Significantly delayed and attenuated responses to unpredictable stimuli;
• Significantly reduced movement velocity.

“Longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether sports concussions induce latent changes in cognitive function that come to surface with increasing age rather than simply acting as an accelerating agent to the aging process,” says De Beaumont. “Premature aging purports serious clinical implications considering that increasing age is the most potent risk factor of Alzheimer’s disease.”