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.

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).

Reliability of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 5 baseline testing: A 2-week test-retest study.

Objectives: To examine short-term test-retest reliability of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 5 (SCAT5).

Design: Longitudinal study.

Methods: Sixty-two professional male ice hockey players (mean age=22.

Risk for Misdiagnosing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Men With Anger Control Problems.

There are no validated or agreed upon criteria for diagnosing chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in a living person. In recent years, it has been proposed that anger dyscontrol represents a behavioral clinical phenotype of CTE. This is the first study to examine the specificity of the diagnostic research criteria for traumatic encephalopathy syndrome (TES, the clinical condition proposed to be CTE) in men from the US general population who have anger dyscontrol problems.

Architecture of Physical, Cognitive, and Emotional Symptoms at Preseason Baseline in Adolescent Student Athletes With a History of Mental Health Problems.

Pre-injury mental health problems are associated with greater symptom reporting following sport-related concussion. We applied a statistical and psychometric approach known as network analysis to examine the interrelationships among symptoms at baseline in adolescent student athletes with a history of mental health problems. Cross-sectional study.

Factors Associated With Self-Reported Concussion History in Middle School Athletes.

Objective: Identifying personal characteristics associated with sustaining a concussion is of great interest, yet only a few have examined this in children. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between sex, neurodevelopmental disorders, health history, and lifetime history of self-reported concussion in 12- and 13-year-old athletes.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Middle School Children With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Have a Greater Concussion History.

Objective: Examine lifetime history of concussions in middle school student athletes who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Nine middle schools in Virginia, USA.

Management of Concussion and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: A Synthesis of Practice Guidelines.

At least 3 million Americans sustain a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) each year, and 1 in 5 have symptoms that persist beyond 1 month. Standards of mTBI care have evolved rapidly, with numerous expert consensus statements and clinical practice guidelines published in the last 5 years. This Special Communication synthesizes recent expert consensus statements and evidenced-based clinical practice guidelines for civilians, athletes, military, and pediatric populations for clinicians practicing outside of specialty mTBI clinics, including primary care providers.

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Perform Differently on Pediatric Concussion Assessment.

Objective: To compare Child Sport Concussion Assessment Tool Fifth Edition (Child SCAT5) performance between uninjured children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and precisely matched controls without ADHD.

Study Design: A nested case-control study was conducted within a cohort of middle school athletes (age 11-12 years) who completed preseason testing. Students with ADHD were individually matched to students without ADHD based on age, sex, language spoken at home, number of prior concussions, sport, and school they attended.

Nocebo Effects in Concussion: Is All That Is Told Beneficial?

Nocebo effects refer to new or worsening symptoms that develop in response to negative health-related information, beliefs, and/or experiences. In recent years, research on concussion pathophysiology has significantly advanced. Through health campaigns and media coverage, emerging knowledge on the risks of this injury has been quickly disseminated to the public, and nowadays, the public perceives concussions as more hazardous to health than ever before.

Preseason Vestibular Ocular Motor Screening in Children and Adolescents.

Objectives: The primary purpose of this study was to examine vestibular/ocular motor screening (VOMS) test performance in a sample of healthy youth ice hockey players. A particular focus was to investigate the potential effects of age and pre-existing health conditions, including concussion history, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disability (LD), headaches/migraines, and depression/anxiety on preseason baseline VOMS performance, including the near point of convergence (NPC) distance.

Design: Cross-sectional cohort.

Slow Processing Speed and Sluggish Cognitive Tempo in Pediatric Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Evidence for Differentiation of Functional Correlates.

The association between slow processing speed and sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), a phenotype described within attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) samples over the past decade, remains unclear. We examined whether SCT and processing speed predict different functional correlates within children and adolescents with ADHD. Participants were 193 clinically-referred youth meeting DSM ADHD criteria without comorbid conditions (mean age = 9.

Network Analysis and Precision Rehabilitation for the Post-concussion Syndrome.

Some people experience persistent symptoms following a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), and the etiology of those symptoms has been debated for generations. Post-concussion-like symptoms are caused by many factors both before and after MTBI, and this non-specificity is the bedrock of the conundrum regarding the existence of the post-concussion syndrome. A latent model or common cause theory for the syndrome is inconsistent with the prevailing biopsychosocial conceptualization.

Preliminary normative study of ImPACT® in Finnish professional male ice hockey players.

Assessment of cognition is an important part of concussion management. The common paradigm of baseline and postinjury evaluations is recommended but due to the often lacking baseline data, reliable normative values are needed. The Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT®) battery is a widely used method of cognitive assessment offering several language options.

National Rugby League match scheduling and rate of concussion.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to evaluate the relationship between pre-match rest days, match location, time of season, and match outcome with diagnosed concussion and use of the Concussion Interchange Rule (CIR) during the 2014 NRL season.

Design: Descriptive observational study.

Methods: This study reviewed all instances of diagnosed concussions, CIR activations, and match characteristics during the 2014 NRL season.

Verifying Head Impacts Recorded by a Wearable Sensor using Video Footage in Rugby League: a Preliminary Study.

Background: Rugby league is a full-contact collision sport with an inherent risk of concussion. Wearable instrumented technology was used to observe and characterize the level of exposure to head impacts during game play.

Purpose: To verify the impacts recorded by the x-patch™ with video analysis.

Multivariate base rates for the assessment of executive functioning among children and adolescents.

This study provides observed base rates of low executive functioning test scores among healthy children and adolescents, stratifies those base rates by narrow intellectual functioning and age groupings, and provides normative classification ranges to aid the interpretation of performances on the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS) in clinical practice and research. Participants included 875 children and adolescents between 8 and 19 years old from the D-KEFS normative sample (48% male; 52% female). Among these participants, 838 had complete data and were included in the current study.

Brief iPad-Based Assessment of Cognitive Functioning with ImPACT® Pediatric.

ImPACT® Pediatric is an examiner-administered iOS-based battery of neuropsychological tests designed to measure neurocognitive functioning in children ages 5-11. This study documented Multivariate Base Rates (prevalence of low scores when multiple test scores are considered simultaneously) in the ImPACT® Pediatric standardization sample (N = 892). In the total sample, it was common for children to obtain at least one low factor score using the 25th percentile [T 43; base rate (BR) = 54.

Graded Combined Aerobic Resistance Exercise (CARE) to Prevent or Treat the Persistent Post-concussion Syndrome.

Purpose Of Review: To review the growing body of indirect and direct evidence that suggests that exercise can be helpful for children, adolescents, and adults with persistent symptoms following a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Recent Findings: The direct evidence shows that graded exercise assessments are safe, and that aerobic exercise interventions are associated with improvement of multiple symptoms and other benefits, including earlier return-to-sport. The indirect evidence supports this approach via studies that reveal the potential mechanisms, and show benefits for related presentations and individual symptoms, including headaches, neck pain, vestibular problems, sleep, stress, anxiety, and depression.

Using concurrent gait and cognitive assessments to identify impairments after concussion: a narrative review.

Understanding how a concussion affects an individual is oftentimes difficult for clinicians due to the varying symptom profiles reported by the patient and the multifaceted and heterogeneous nature of the injury. Accordingly, the interpretation of postconcussion performance can be challenging, because many different testing paradigms have been reported as potentially useful in the literature. Among the types of tests clinicians use to understand how concussion affects an individual, both gait and neurocognitive evaluations have demonstrated utility.

Effects of Exercise on Sport Concussion Assessment Tool-Third Edition Performance in Women.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of a brief exercise protocol on Sport Concussion Assessment Tool-Third Edition (SCAT3) performance in amateur women athletes.

Design: Cross-over repeated-measures design.

Setting: Off-season, uninjured community amateur athletes.

Resting State Electroencephalography and Sports-Related Concussion: A Systematic Review.

Sports-related concussion is associated with a range of short-term functional deficits that are commonly thought to recover within a two-week post-injury period for most, but certainly not all, persons. Resting state electroencephalography (rs-EEG) may prove to be an affordable, accessible, and sensitive method of assessing severity of brain injury and rate of recovery after a concussion. This article presents a systematic review of rs-EEG in sports-related concussion.

Preinjury Migraine History as a Risk Factor for Prolonged Return to School and Sports following Concussion.

Having a preexisting migraine disorder might be a risk factor for a prolonged recovery following a sport-related concussion. We examined whether having a migraine history was associated with a prolonged return to academics and athletics following a concussion. High school and collegiate athletes (n = 1265; 42% female) who sustained a sport-related concussion were monitored by athletic trainers using a web-based surveillance system that collects information about concussion recovery.

Effect of depression on cognition after mild traumatic brain injury in adults.

Objective: The current study examined the effect of depression on cognitive test performance in a sample of adults seeking treatment for a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). We hypothesized that patients with greater depressive symptoms would perform worse on tasks of fluid cognition compared to those without depression, after controlling for potential confounds.

Method: Patients (N = 76) completed a brief cognitive test battery (NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery; NIHTB-CB) and a depression screening questionnaire (PHQ-9) at 11.

Traumatic Brain Injury-Related Symptoms Reported by Parents: Clinical, Imaging, and Host Predictors in Children with Impairments in Consciousness Less than 24 Hours.

This study examined the relationship between acute neuroimaging, host and injury factors, and parent-reported traumatic brain injury (TBI)-related symptoms in children with noncritical head injury at two weeks and three months after injury. Data were collected prospectively on 45 subjects aged three to 16 years old enrolled in the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) study. Subjects had rapid recovery of mental status (Glasgow Coma Score [GCS] = 15 within 24 h), and had no clinical need for neurosurgical intervention.