Abstract #3303

Functional Connectivity Alterations in Asymptomatic High School Football Players

Trey Shenk¹, Kausar Abbas¹, Evan Breedlove², Victoria N. Poole³,⁴, Katherine Breedlove⁵, Larry Leverenz⁵, Eric Nauman²,⁴, Thomas Talavage¹,³, Meghan Robinson,³⁶

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

We have explored resting state functional connectivity in asymptomatic high school American football players and a cohort of non-contact athletes peers. Seed-based default mode network (DMN) analysis reveals that while the total number of voxels included in the DMN did not change significantly with hits, the location of the DMN, as defined by number of voxels in MarsBaR regions, did. Independent component analysis (ICA) on all sessions was used to find stable networks. Pairwise correlations between networks were significantly different in players than controls in 8 of the 15 pairs, and further were correlated with hits in some cases.