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<p>Recent observations of short-term changes in the neural health of youth athletes
participating in collision sports such as football (boys) and soccer (girls) have incited a need to
explore structural alterations in their brain tissue volumes. Studies have shown biochemical,
vascular, functional connectivity, and white matter diffusivity changes in the brain physiology of
these athletes that are strongly correlated with repetitive head acceleration exposure from on-field
collisions. Here, research is presented that highlights regional anatomical volumetric measures that
change longitudinally with accrued repetitive head impacts. A novel pipeline is introduced that
provides simplified data analysis on a standard-space template to quantify group-level longitudinal
volumetric changes within these populations. For both sports, results highlight incremental relative
regional volumetric changes in the sub-cortical cerebrospinal fluid that are strongly correlated with
head exposure events greater than a 50G threshold at the short-term post-season assessment.
Moreover, longitudinal regional gray matter volumes are observed to decrease with time, only
returning to baseline/pre-participation levels after sufficient (5-6 months) rest from collision-based
exposure. These temporal structural volumetric alterations are significantly different from normal
aging observed in gender and age-matched controls participating in non-collision sports. Future
work involves modeling safe repetitive head exposure thresholds with multimodal image analysis
and understanding their underlying physiological functioning. A possible pathophysiological
pathway is presented highlighting the probable metabolic regulatory mechanisms. The
interdisciplinary nature of this work is crucial to understand this pathology accurately and aid
healthcare, sport professionals in the future. It is evident that continual participation in collision-
based activities may represent a risk wherein recovery cannot occur. Even when present, the degree
of the eventual recovery remains to be explored but has strong implications for the well-being of
collision-sport participants.
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| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/19175651 |
| Date | 18 April 2022 |
| Creators | Pratik Kashyap (12089945) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/PATHOPHYSIOLOGICAL_MODELING_OF_THE_NORMALIZED_BRAIN_TISSUE-LEVEL_VOLUMETRIC_EVALUATIONS_OF_YOUTH_ATHLETES_PARTICIPATING_IN_COLLISION_SPORTS/19175651 |
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