Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine cortical thickness and subcortical volumes in professional rugby players with an extensive history of concussions compared to control subjects.
Method: Participants included 24 active and former professional rugby league players [Age M(SD) = 33.3(6.3); Range = 21-44] with an extensive history of concussion and 18 age- and education-matched controls with no history of neurotrauma or participation in contact sports. Participants underwent T1-weighted imaging and completed a neuropsychological battery, including two tests of memory. Whole brain cortical thickness analysis and structural volume analysis was performed using FreeSurfer version 6.0.
Results: Professional rugby league players reported greater alcohol consumption ( < .001) and had significantly worse delayed recall of a visually complex design ( = .04). They did not differ from controls on other clinical outcome measures. There were no differences in cortical thickness between the groups. Professional players had smaller whole brain ( = .003), bilateral hippocampi (s = .03), and left amygdala volumes ( = .01) compared to healthy controls. Within the players group, there were significant associations between greater alcohol use and smaller bilateral hippocampi and left amygdala volumes. There were no associations between structural volumes and history of concussions or memory performance.
Conclusions: The literature examining cortical thickness in athletes with a history of multiple concussions is mixed. We did not observe differences in cortical thickness in professional rugby league players compared to controls. However, smaller subcortical volumes were found in players that were, in part, associated with greater alcohol consumption.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5814377 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2018.01.005 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Psychological-Emotional Aspect and Lifestyle in Professional Males Rugby Athletes.
Nutrients
January 2025
Sports Medicine Centre, University of Florence, 50121 Firenze, Italy.
Background: Recent research emphasizes the importance of integrating psychological-emotional factors with nutrition and body composition in athletes. This study investigates the correlations between these aspects in 36 professional rugby players, aiming to identify relationships that could optimize sports performance and overall well-being.
Methods: The study sample included 36 male athletes (mean age: 24.
Optimising Instrumented Mouthguard Data Analysis: Video Synchronisation Using a Cross-correlation Approach.
Ann Biomed Eng
January 2025
Carnegie Applied Rugby Research (CARR) Centre, Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK.
Purpose: Head acceleration events (HAEs) are a growing concern in contact sports, prompting two rugby governing bodies to mandate instrumented mouthguards (iMGs). This has resulted in an influx of data imposing financial and time constraints. This study presents two computational methods that leverage a dataset of video-coded match events: cross-correlation synchronisation aligns iMG data to a video recording, by providing playback timestamps for each HAE, enabling analysts to locate them in video footage; and post-synchronisation event matching identifies the coded match event (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCan a novel computer vision-based framework detect head-on-head impacts during a rugby league tackle?
Inj Prev
January 2025
Carnegie Applied Rugby Research (CARR) centre, Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK.
Background: Head-on-head impacts are a risk factor for concussion, which is a concern for sports. Computer vision frameworks may provide an automated process to identify head-on-head impacts, although this has not been applied or evaluated in rugby.
Methods: This study developed and evaluated a novel computer vision framework to automatically classify head-on-head and non-head-on-head impacts.
Diagnosed concussion is associated with increased risk for upper extremity injury in community rugby players in males only.
Phys Sportsmed
December 2024
Department of Kinesiology and Applied Physiology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Objectives: To cross-sectionally determine 1) the association between lifetime diagnosed concussion and upper extremity musculoskeletal injury (UE-MSI) amongst a novel cohort of community rugby union players and 2) the sex specific risk of UE-MSI given concussion history among these rugby players.
Methods: 1,037 (31.0% female, 31.
A tackler correctly adhering to the tackle instruction in a front-on, one-on-one torso tackle alters the peak inertial head kinematics of the ball carrier but not the tackler.
J Sci Med Sport
November 2024
World Rugby, Pty (Ltd), Ireland. Electronic address: https://twitter.com/Scienceofsport.
Objectives: To evaluate if the tackler correctly adhering, or not, to four different instructions of legal front-on one-on-one torso tackles altered the tackler and/or ball carrier peak inertial head kinematics.
Design: Controlled laboratory study.
Methods: Fifteen rugby-code players measured with three-dimensional optoelectronic motion capture performed two tackle instructions from the Australian National Rugby League coaching manual on under (Dominant National Rugby League) and over (Smother National Rugby League) the ball tackles, and two novel variants of these (under, Dominant, Torso Stick; over, Smother, Pop, Lock).
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!