History of mild traumatic brain injury is associated with deficits in relational memory, reduced hippocampal volume, and less neural activity later in life

Abstract

Evidence suggests that a history of head trauma is associated with memory deficits later in life. The majority of previous research has focused on moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), but recent evidence suggests that even a mild TBI (mTBI) can interact with the aging process and produce reductions in memory performance. This study examined the association of mTBI with memory and the brain by comparing young and middle-aged adults who have had mTBI in their recent (several years ago) and remote (several decades ago) past, respectively, with control subjects on a face-scene relational memory paradigm while they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Hippocampal volumes were also examined from high-resolution structural images. Results indicated middle-aged adults with a head injury in their remote past had impaired memory compared to gender, age, and education matched control participants, consistent with previous results in the study of memory, aging, and TBI. The present findings extended previous results by demonstrating that these individuals also had smaller bilateral hippocampi, and had reduced neural activity during memory performance in cortical regions important for memory retrieval. These results indicate that a history of mTBI may be one of the many factors that negatively influence cognitive and brain health in aging.

Lifelong behavioral and neuropathological consequences of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury

“…The effects of TBI on the normal synchrony of neuronal networks and how it leads to cognitive impairments are likely to be complex,38, 39 and the exact nature and timing of this network dysfunction in our model remains to be elucidated. Nevertheless, our observations are consistent with the findings from clinical studies suggesting that r‐mTBI associated with white matter changes has long‐term implications for brain communication40 and cognitive functioning 41, 42, 43, 44…”

Whiplash Injury and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Differential Effects on Cognitive Functioning?

“…The outcome of the study is compatible with findings from other studies. However, in contrast to previous studies [1,13,16,17,19,[20][21][22][23], the MTBI patients showed no significantly reduced speed of information processing as was evaluated with the PASAT. An overview of the results of this study can be seen in Table 1.…”

“…In MTBI patients, mild impairments in speed of information processing, (sustained, divided, focused and/or alternating) attention and (auditory-verbal and/or visuospatial) memory have been found [1,13,16,17,19,[20][21][22][23]. With regard to memory, most patients displayed deficits concerning the storage of new information into memory and/ or the reproduction of recently learned information from memory.…”

“…With regard to cognitive functioning, WI and MTBI patients often complain of poor attention and memory [7]. Several studies have looked for objective findings concerning cognitive dysfunctions after WI [1,2,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and MTBI [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and have found the presence of only mild cognitive deficits, if any, in both patient groups, mainly in the domain of attention, information processing and memory.…”

A review of sleep disturbances following traumatic brain injury

“…Various studies have revealed deficits in multiple neurocognitive domains following TBI, such as attention, visuospatial ability, memory and executive function (Carlsson et al 1987;Konrad et al 2011;Ponsford et al 2008;De Beaumont et al 2009;Himanen et al 2006;Isoniemi et al 2006;Monti et al 2013). Others have demonstrated the utility of post-injury neuropsychological testing in predicting which patients develop chronic neurocognitive impairments (Carlsson et al 1987;Konrad et al 2011;Ponsford et al 2008;De Beaumont et al 2009;Himanen et al 2006;Monti et al 2013). One such study (n = 105) showed that cognitive flexibility and reaction times testing in the emergency department predicted symptoms one month following TBI in the pediatric population (Brooks et al 2016).…”