Sport experience is correlated with complex motor skill recovery in youth following concussion

Abstract

A previous study showed prolonged cognitive-motor integration (CMI) deficits in youth with a history of concussion who were classified as asymptomatic by current return-to-play protocols, highlighting potential differences between clinical symptom recovery and skill recovery. The present study examines factors that may influence skilled performance recovery (defined as matching the skill level of no-concussion history peers) post-concussion in a similar cohort. Sixty-four asymptomatic youth (M = 13 yrs.) soccer, hockey, and lacrosse players with a concussion history (M = 14 months postconcussion) who returned to play and sixty-two age-matched team members with no previous concussion participated in this study. They performed two touchscreen-based eye-hand coordination tasks, including a direct interaction and a CMI task. We analysed the relationship between CMI performance and concussion history, and whether age, sex, number of concussions, and years of sport experience in their sport affected skill recovery. Individuals with concussion history and higher amounts of sport experience (7-12 years) reached a performance level matching their no-history peers quicker (after 12 months) than those with concussion history and lower sport experience (1-6 years; recovery after 30 months). This effect was independent of the number of concussions, age, and sex. The present results point towards an important role of eye-limb coordination-related sport experience in functional CMI recovery post-concussion. Youth with a concussion history but greater sport experience may have more skill-related motor "reserve". This reserve may directly aid in behavioural recovery post-concussion, or the greater neurological efficiency associated with athletic experience provides a compensatory mechanism that provides faster functional recovery.

Motor Deficits in Youth with Concussion History: Issues with Task Novelty or Task Demand?

“…The present findings combined with previous discoveries [8] may partially explain why youth who returned to game-play after a concussion are at a higher risk of incurring another concussion or injury within the first year post-injury [11,12]. In previous studies, it was shown that lingering eye-hand decoupling deficits remained present for much longer than previously expected in both asymptomatic youth [8,9] and asymptomatic elite athletes [14] who had all returned to play. In the present study, we expand on these findings with details about the time course of EHD deficits in youth with concussion history to include task demand.…”

“…In line with these findings, previous work has shown prolonged eye-hand coordination deficits in youth with concussion history for up to 1.5 years post-concussion when participant's performed a challenging cognitive-motor task that required a decoupling of eye and hand movement direction [8,9]. Importantly, all of the young athletes involved in these studies had already returned to game play after their concussion, in accordance with the current return to play protocols at the time the concussion-incident occurred [10].…”

“…We re-analyzed data from 114 youth participants who were already part of previous studies [8,9]. The present data set included 59 participants with a history of sport-related concussion (13.00 ± 1.82 yr; 29 females) and 55 control participants with no history of concussion (12.04 ± 1.89 yr; 23 females).…”

“…required during sports activities -but perform well during simple motor tasks that are used in return-to-play measures [8,9].…”

The Effects of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury on Cognitive-Motor Integration for Skilled Performance

“…We have used our task in several sport concussion studies (29)(30)(31)(32), and always observe significant differences in performance outcomes related to both timing and accuracy in concussed athletes vs. controls. We compared youth athletes (8-16 years old) with a history of concussion who were asymptomatic and deemed recovered (33) to age-matched controls with no history of concussion (30).…”