Objective Brain Function Assessment of mTBI/Concussion in College Athletes

Injured/concussed subjects will be studied at time of injury, and at 3 follow-up time points following injury. Matched controls will be tested following the same schedule as the injured athletes. In addition, the study will include an additional pool of contact and non-contact athletes who are not head injured and will be assessed prior to the season and then after the season has ended. This data will be used to populate a database for the purpose of deriving a multimodal concussion index.

Inclusion criteria

• Concussion-Injury subjects will be defined as follows: Any player who, based on independent clinical impression, is suspected of having suffered a concussion of any severity level, and on whom a routine clinical examination for concussion or head injury would have been conducted prior to implementation of this research protocol according to current standard practice.

• If loss of consciousness, total duration less than <20 minutes
• No evidence of abnormality visible on Computerized Tomography (CT) of the head related to the traumatic event (Note: neuroimaging is not required for enrollment)
• No hospital admission due to either head injury or collateral injuries for >24 hours.
• GCS is between 13-15.

Exclusion criteria

• Evidence of illicit drug usage
• Do not speak or read English
• Current CNS active prescription medications, with the exception of medications being taken for the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
• Skull abnormalities, e.g. metal plate
• History of brain surgery or neurological disease.