Grant: Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA)

The goal of this project is to build on our previous work examining the effect of repetitive subconcussive head impacts (RSHI) on white matter structure in collegiate football athletes. We documented reduced fractional anisotropy (FA), a marker of reduced directionally of diffusion in white matter, after a season of football in the corpus callosum and the corticospinal tract of athletes who had a greater frequency of impacts measured with helmet accelerometers over the season.1 Since then, we have worked with collaborators at the University of Waterloo (UW) to create maps of maximum principal strain (MPS) derived from instrumented mouth guard impact data that can be overlaid with neuroimaging findings to localize where brain deformation is related to changes in WM structures. Therefore, we will determine how MPS localizes with white matter changes, measured with more specific neuroimaging indicators than used previously, after concussion in injured players. We will also develop a metric based on MPS that represents the cumulative head impact exposure over the entire season and correlate this with white matter changes in football in players who do not sustain a concussion but are exposed to RSHI.