Despite the high prevalence of traumatic brain injuries (TBI), there are few rapid and straightforward tests to improve its assessment. To this end, we developed a tablet-based software battery ("BrainCheck") for concussion detection that is well suited to sports, emergency department, and clinical settings. This article is a study of the diagnostic accuracy of BrainCheck. We administered BrainCheck to 30 TBI patients and 30 pain-matched controls at a hospital Emergency Department (ED), and 538 healthy individuals at 10 control test sites. We compared the results of the tablet-based assessment against physician diagnoses derived from brain scans, clinical examination, and the SCAT3 test, a traditional measure of TBI. We found consistent distributions of normative data and high test-retest reliability. Based on these assessments, we defined a composite score that distinguishes TBI from non-TBI individuals with high sensitivity (83%) and specificity (87%). We conclude that our testing application provides a rapid, portable testing method for TBI.

The leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) mutation G2019S is one of the most common genetic causes in Parkinson's disease (PD). The penetrance of G2019S LRRK2 is incomplete and is age-dependent, therefore, it has been speculated that environmental toxins and aging could contribute to G2019S LRRK2-related PD pathogenesis. To prove this speculation, we performed a longitudinal investigation in mice bearing G2019S LRRK2 mutation. BAC G2019S LRRK2 transgenic (Tg) mice and their wildtype (Wt) littermates were treated with lactacystin, a specific proteasome inhibitor. The susceptibilities of mice to lactacystin-induced nigrostriatal dopaminergic (DAergic) degeneration were evaluated, at 5 and 12 months of age. We found that lactacystin treatment caused a greater decline of striatal DA content in the Tg mice at either 5 or 12 months of age than their age-matched Wt littermates. Moreover, the lactacystin-treated Tg or Wt mice at 12 months of age lose much more nigral tyrosine hydroxylase (TH)-positive neurons than the mice at 5 months of age, indicating an age-associated DAergic neurotoxicity. Additionally, stereotactic injection of lactacystin induced a dramatic increase of activated microglia in substantia nigra of mice at 12 months of age, compared with mice at 5 months of age. In summary, our study suggests that expression of the G2019S mutation in the mouse LRRK2 gene confers an age-associated high susceptibility to proteasome inhibition-induced nigrostriatal DAergic degeneration.