Comparing fMRI activation during smooth pursuit eye movements among contact sport athletes, non-contact sport athletes, and non-athletes

Kellar, Derek; Newman, Sharlene D.; Pestilli, Franco; Cheng, Hu; Port, Nicholas

doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2018.01.025

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 115 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A sub-concussive impact can be defined as an event that causes a brain insult with insufficient force to produce clinical signs and symptoms that characterise a concussion [ 15 ]. Not unlike concussion events, sub-concussive impacts can cause deficits in cognition and alterations in postural control [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. For instance, reduced performance in attention and memory were found in university rugby players post season, with only 3% experiencing a diagnosed concussion [ 18 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Sub-Concussive Impacts during a Rugby Tackling Drill on Brain Function

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Concussion is known to detrimentally affect brain health. Rugby tackles commonly occur with high collision force between tackler and ball carrier, and low impact head contact is not uncommon. Cognitive deficits following a bout of soccer ball heading has been attributed to the impact and termed sub-concussion. Although soccer ball heading studies provide evidence for acute effects of sub-concussion, it is unknown whether this phenomenon occurs following rugby tackles. This study investigates the acute effects of rugby tackles on brain function and balance in rugby players. Twenty-six volunteers were assigned to either the ball carrier (9), tackler (9) or control (8) group. Controls performed running without the tackle. Outcome measures included corticomotor function using transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS) and balance was assessed by a series of tasks performed on a NeuroCom Balance Master before and immediately after a tackle training drill. Following the tackling bout, the cortical silent period (cSP) increased for the tacklers with no change for ball carrier and control groups, and no differences between groups for balance measures were observed. Lengthening of cSP observed in the tacklers following the bout has been reported in studies of concussion and may indicate long term detrimental effects.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Sub-Concussive Impacts during a Rugby Tackling Drill on Brain Function

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some researchers attempted to investigate the difference in brain activity between athletes and non-athlete controls (NC) during certain tasks (Gao et al, 2019), with different regions of task-induced activation between the two groups that are being reported. For instance, in the visual smooth pursuit task, football players showed greater activation in the oculomotor region of the cerebellar vermis and areas of the frontal eye fields than NC, suggesting visual motor skill is required for elite football players to successfully execute complex movement during games (Kellar et al, 2018). In addition, enhanced inferior parietal/frontal gyrus activity has been proposed in basketball players anticipating a free-throw task (Wu et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered Brain Functional Connectivity Density in Fast-Ball Sports Athletes With Early Stage of Motor Training

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The human brain shows neuroplastic adaptations caused by motor skill training. Of note, there is little known about the plastic architecture of the whole-brain network in resting state. The purpose of the present study was to detect how motor training affected the density distribution of whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity (FC). Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data was assessed based on a comparison of fast-ball student athletes (SA) and non-athlete healthy controls (NC). The voxel-wise data-driven graph theory approach, global functional connectivity density (gFCD) mapping, was applied. Results showed that the SA group exhibited significantly decreased gFCD in brain regions centered at the left triangular part of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), extending to the opercular part of the left IFG and middle frontal gyrus compared to the NC group. In addition, findings suggested the idea of an increased neural efficiency of athletes' brain regions associated with attentional-motor modulation and executive control. Furthermore, behavioral results showed that in the SA group, faster executive control reaction time relates to smaller gFCD values in the left IFG. These findings suggested that the motor training would decrease the numbers of FC in IFG to accelerate the executive control with high attentional demands and enable SA to rapidly focus the attention to detect the intriguing target.

show abstract

“…MLCs reached very high classification accuracy, peaking over 90%. We tested a series of theory-driven hypotheses to identify the variables that best drive the measured microstructural tissue differences in major white-matter tracts and rule out a series of alternative nuisance drivers such as socioeconomic variables (Kellar et al, 2018;Leijser et al, 2018) and brain tissue size and volume.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advanced mapping of the human white matter microstructure better separates elite sports participation

Caron¹,

Bullock²,

Kitchell³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Collision-sport athletes, especially football players, are exposed to a higher number of repetitive head impacts. Little is known, however, regarding the effects of long-term exposure to repetitive head impacts on brain tissue structure and the locations (i.e. superficial or deep tissue structures) affected. On top of this, little is known about the effects of highly competitive athletics on brain tissue structure. We investigated this relationship, including the baseline effect of collegiate athletic participation, by mapping measures of microstructure to cortical and subcortical white matter parcels and major white matter tracts of varsity IU football players, cross-country runners, and non-athlete students using advanced microstructural mapping techniques and machine-learning. We tested a series of hypotheses on the differences between the subject groups. To do so, we implemented an innovative approach to statistical hypothesis testing combining advanced white matter tissue properties and machine-learning classifiers. We used cross-validation to select the best subject group model and best machine-learning classifier. Wide-spread differences in brain tissue microstructure across cortical, subcortical, and major white matter structures were documented. The tissue properties of the major white matter tracts were found to best predict collision-sport participation and sports participation in general, however, cortical and subcortical white matter parcels were also found to predict collision-sports participation. The biggest differences in brain tissue microstructure is between the athletes (football and cross country combined) and the non-athletes students. The rewards and risks of playing competitive sports at the highest collegiate level may account for the differences in brain microstructure. This was the first investigation into the effects of repetitive head impacts to use an open-source data processing platform brainlife.io. The data and code for these analyses are available via brainlife.io.

show abstract

Comparing fMRI activation during smooth pursuit eye movements among contact sport athletes, non-contact sport athletes, and non-athletes

Cited by 18 publications

References 115 publications

The Effect of Sub-Concussive Impacts during a Rugby Tackling Drill on Brain Function

The Effect of Sub-Concussive Impacts during a Rugby Tackling Drill on Brain Function

Altered Brain Functional Connectivity Density in Fast-Ball Sports Athletes With Early Stage of Motor Training

Advanced mapping of the human white matter microstructure better separates elite sports participation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About