Abstract #2346

Proximal and Distal Effects of Subconcussive Head Impacts on fMRI Activity in Asymptomatic High School Football Players

Meghan Robinson¹,², Evan Breedlove³, Victoria N. Poole²,⁴, Larry Leverenz⁵, Eric Nauman³,⁴, Thomas Talavage,²⁶

¹Translational Research Center for TBI and Stress Disorders (TRACTS), VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States; ²Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ³Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ⁴Basic Medical Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ⁵Health and Kinesiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States; ⁶Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

We investigated the effects of subconcussive head trauma in a cohort of asymptomatic high school football players. Head impacts were measured via accelerometers in players helmets. Changes from pre-season to in-season in fMRI activations during two working memory tasks were measured. These changes were compared to the hit history (number and location of the hits) of the players through a stepwise regression. We found that hits were likely to produce negative correlations in proximal regions and positive correlations in distal regions. This result was consistent across two task types (visual and verbal) and two contrasts.