The relationship of the Trail Making Test (TMT) to the frontal lobes was tested by comparing patients with damage to the frontal and nonfrontal regions to control participants. Although the analysis of time measurements, both raw and transformed, showed notable slowing of frontal groups, error analysis proved to be a more useful method of categorizing performance. Analysis of errors on Part B indicated that all patients who made more than 1 error had frontal lesions. Dividing the frontal damaged patients into subgroups on the basis of the number of errors yielded specificity of brain-behavior relations within the frontal lobes. Patients with damage in dorsolateral frontal areas were most impaired. Those with inferior medial damage to the frontal lobes were not significantly affected in TMT Part B performance.

Concussed athletes do not report as much emotional disturbance as athletes with ACL injuries. Differential patterns of emotional disturbance were detected between injured groups. The authors recommended that clinical protocols and educational programmes address emotional sequelae associated with sport concussion and ACL injury.

The results revealed that both injured groups experienced emotional disturbance after injury. More importantly, the findings strongly suggest that the emotional reaction after concussion is different from that of musculoskeletal injury. Therefore, we concluded that assessing emotional reactions to concussion is particularly important and recommend that sports medicine professionals assess and monitor emotional functioning as well as somatic complaints and neurocognitive changes during recovery.

Despite suggestions that emotions influence recovery from injury, there is little research into the emotional sequelae of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), or “concussion,” in sport. This examination compares emotional functioning of college athletes with MTBI to that of uninjured teammates and undergraduates. A short version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS; Grove & Prapavessis, 1992) assessed baseline emotions in all groups, and serial emotional functioning in the MTBI and undergraduate groups. Whereas preinjury profiles were similar across groups, the MTBI group showed a significant postinjury spike in depression, confusion, and total mood disturbance that was not seen for the other groups. The elevated mood disturbances subsided within 3 weeks postinjury. Given that concussed athletes were highly motivated to return to play, these data could be used as a benchmark of normal emotional recovery from MTBI. Findings are discussed in relation to current literature on emotional reaction to injury and directions for future research.

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