For persons with DOC 29 to 170 days after TBI, FAST resulted in CNC gains and increased neural responsivity to vocal stimuli in language regions. Clinicians should consider providing the FAST to support patient engagement in neurorehabilitation.

Stimuli, including contexts, which predict the availability or onset of a drug effect, can acquire conditioned incentive motivational properties. These conditioned properties endure after withdrawal, and can promote drug-seeking which may result in relapse. Conditioned place preference (CPP) assesses the associations between drugs and the context in which they are experienced. Here, we review the potential utility of CPP procedures in rodents and humans to evaluate medications that target conditioned drug-seeking responses. We discuss the translational potential of the CPP procedure from rodents to humans, and review findings with FDA-approved treatments that support the use of CPP to develop relapse-reduction medications. We also discuss challenges and methodological questions in applying the CPP procedure to this purpose. We argue that an efficient and valid CPP procedure in humans may reduce the burden of full clinical trials with drug-abusing patients that are currently required for testing promising treatments.

There is conflicting evidence regarding whether females are more adversely affected after concussion than males. Further, recent research suggests that hormonal contraceptive (HC) use may affect symptom severity and duration post-concussion. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of sex and HC use on outcomes following concussion among collegiate varsity athletes. We hypothesized that females would have longer length of recovery (LOR), and that peak symptom severity would be associated with longer LOR in both males and females. Among females, we hypothesized that non-HC users would have longer LOR and higher peak symptom severity than HC users. Ninety collegiate student-athletes were included in this study (40 males, 50 females; 24 HC users, 25 non-HC users). Demographic, injury, and recovery information was abstracted via retrospective record review. LOR was defined as days between injury and clearance for full return to play by team physician. Peak symptom severity score (Sport Concussion Assessment Tool [SCAT] 2 or 3) was used in analyses. Study results revealed that males had shorter LOR than females (F[1, 86] = 5.021, p < 0.05, d = 0.49), but had comparable symptom severity scores. Symptom severity was strongly related to LOR for males (r = 0.513, p < 0.01) but not females (r = -0.003, p > 0.05). Among females, non-HC users demonstrated higher symptom severity than HC users (F[1,47] = 5.142, p < 0.05, d = 0.70). No significant differences between female HC users and non-HC users on LOR were observed. This study provides evidence for differential concussion outcomes between male and female collegiate athletes and between HC users and nonusers among females.

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