Functional Changes in mTBI Patients

Principal Investigator: Dr. Jason Druzgal, UVa Dept. of Radiology

A reported 1.7 million people experience traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year¹. After a concussion, athletes are cleared to return to play after 7 to 10 days², while non-athletes are typically expected to recover within 3 to 6 months^3,4,5. Researchers were interested in investigating whether disruptions in functional activity and connectivity persist beyond the clinical recovery period.

This was the undergraduate thesis project of a student I mentored in the UVa Functional Neuroradiology Lab. In addition to teaching her how to write bash scripts for using UVa’s HPC system, I performed machine learning analyses in MATLAB using the Pronto toolbox for classifying functional brain activity.

References:

1. Roozenbeek, B., Maas, A. I. & Menon, D.K. (2013) Changing patterns in the epidemiology of traumatic brain injury. Nat. Rev. Neurol, 9(4), 231-236.

2. Slobounov SM, Zhang K, Pennell D, Ray W, Johnson B, Sebastianelli W. (2010) Functional abnormalities in normally appearing athletes following mild traumatic brain injury: a functional MRI study. Exp Brain Res, 202(2), 341-354.

3. Leddy JJ, Sandhu H, Sodhi V, Baker JG, Willer B. (2012) Rehabilitation of Concussion and Post-concussion Syndrome. Sports Health 4(2), 147-154.

4. Rosenbaum, S., & Lipton, M. (2012). Embracing chaos: the scope and importance of clinical adn pathological heterogeneity in mTBI. Brain Imaging And Behavior, 6(2), 255-282.

5. Losoi H, Silverber ND, Wajas M, Turunen S, Rosti-Otajarvi E, Helminem M, Luoto TM, Julkunen J, Ohman J, Iverson GL. (2016) Recovery from Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Previously Healthy Adults. J Neurotrauma, 33(8), 766-776.