Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Accurately assessing how the brain is functioning is a key challenge when selecting an appropriate treatment strategy for a patient with brain trauma. Brainwave technologies are emerging as promising tools to assess brain trauma because brain performance can be evaluated from on-going brainwave changes. Previous studies have demonstrated the value of using brainwave technologies to diagnose brain trauma, but brainwave technologies have not been used to monitor changes in brain performance over time. Similarly, other research has investigated the relationship between certain brainwaves and clinical tests, but this relationship has not been examined during long term brain performance monitoring. The current study will monitor on-going brain function changes in trauma patients and healthy individuals over time. Brainwave technology will be used to measure brainwave changes from each group across consistent time points. During the same time points, the brain will also be evaluated using in-depth clinical assessment and screening tests. We hypothesize that 1) brain function will improve in trauma patients over time relative to healthy individuals; and 2) that brain performance data acquired from brainwaves will be strongly related to performance on clinical tests for each group. We currently lack an objective, physiological method to assess brain function changes over time. The current study will demonstrate whether brain performance changes can be monitored over time using brainwave technology. The next step will be to use brainwave technology to examine the effects of treatment interventions on brain function. The ability to accurately monitor changes in the brain using brainwave technology will provide an objective way to assess brain function changes; this will give clinicians better tools for treatment planning and guiding on-going rehabilitation strategies following brain trauma.