Item Details

title

EFFECTS OF REPETITIVE NON-CONCUSSIVE HEAD IMPACT EXPOSURE ON DEFAULT MODE NETWORK CONNECTIVITY AMONG YOUTH FOOTBALL PLAYERS

author

Kim, Donghoon

abstract

Sports-related concussions have been shown to alter default mode connectivity in the brain. However, less is known about repetitive non-concussive head impact exposure, especially among understudied youth athletes. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if repetitive sports-related head impact exposure alters default mode network (DMN) connectivity among youth football players compared to a non-contact sport control group. Also, we investigated a dose response relationship to impact exposure using a multiple comparison test including control, high and low head impact exposure football player groups. Seventy-three male youth football players and 25 age-matched male non-contact sports controls were recruited for this study. None of them had a history of concussion before or during the sports season. Participants received pre- and post-season MRI including resting-state BOLD fMRI. Pre-processed fMRI data were co-registered to structural T1-weighted images. A DMN seed was created from the orthogonal slices of the spatial cross-correlation from the independent component analysis (ICA) spatial maps and used to extract individual DMNs for pre- and post-season data. A delta metric was computed by subtracting pre- and post-season DMN data to estimate connectivity strength changes. Two statistical analyses, the voxel-wise 2 sample t-test and a multiple comparison test, were conducted to examine between group differences.

subject

Concussion

Default mode network

fMRI

Football

contributor

Whitlow, Christopher T (committee chair)

Whitlow, Christopher T (committee member)

Jung, Youngkyoo (committee member)

Bourland, John D (committee member)

date

2019-05-24T08:35:47Z (accessioned)

2021-05-23T08:30:12Z (available)

2019 (issued)

degree

Biomedical Engineering (discipline)

embargo

2021-05-23 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/93964 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis