A Threat to Decision Making: Effects of Concussions on Athlete's Attention
The aim of this study was to examine the relation between mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI/concussion) and cognitive dysfunction. Sport-related mTBI's occur frequently and have become an important topic in the sports sciences community (Ellemberg et al., 2007; Belanger & Vanderploeg, 2005), and effects of mTBI on an athletes' cognition have been studied by many researchers intrigued by cognitive set backs that an athlete can experience after an mTBI (Beaumont et al., 2007; Gossselin et al., 2006). Goals of this research included understanding how athletes, who have suffered from at least one mTBI in their history, differ in their performance on cognitive tasks that tap various aspects of attention, from athletes who have never experienced mTBI. Attention was assessed using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during a three stimulus oddball paradigm; this paradigm consists of the presentation of two categories of stimuli, both having different probabilities of occurrence. Results indicated that athlete's who have one or more mTBI's in their history, perform worse on the three stimulus oddball paradigm than athletes who never received an mTBI. Specifically, smaller P3 amplitude was observed, indicating a reduction in the allocation of attentional resources. However, no such mTBI-related differences were found for behavioral measures. These findings suggested that an athletes' attention is negatively affected by concussion history.
School:
University of California at Merced
Department:
Sports Psychology / Kinesiology
Research Advisor:
Charles Hillman
Department of Research Advisor:
Kinesiology & Community Health
Year of Publication:
2008