Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

A concussion is defined as a complex pathophysiological injury to the brain resulting from biomechanical forces. Despite 90% of symptoms resolving within 7-10 days following the occurrence of the concussion, previous research has demonstrated that visuomotor deficits persist beyond the resolution of physical symptoms. This suggests that clinical recovery and medical clearance to return to full activity differ from physiological recovery. To better understand the duration of physiological recovery, it has been suggested that dynamic balance and avoidance tasks should be used to assess decision making and perception and action integration. The purpose of my Master's thesis is to assess training-specific collision avoidance behaviours of individuals following a concussion to better understand the duration of cognitive recovery post-concussion. The behaviours of previously concussed athletes will be compared to their non-concussed counterparts to understand cognitive recovery following a concussion. Furthermore, as the incidence of new injuries increases by 60% following a concussion, this study will aim to correlate visuomotor performance and the presence of new injuries following medical clearance to determine whether these injuries may be a result of persistent cognitive deficits. It is expected that physiological recovery will take longer than clinical recovery. In addition, we hypothesize athletes who perform worse during the collision avoidance task will sustain more injuries following medical clearance. This study will be used to better understand the duration of physiological recovery post-concussion and ensure athletes are truly safe to return to play to avoid re-injury.