Neuropsychological Consequence of Soccer Play in Adolescent U.K. School Team Soccer Players

Abstract

To assess mild head injury effects in adolescent soccer players, neuropsychological performance across school team soccer players, rugby players and noncontact sport players was assessed in a quasi-experimental cross-sectional design. One hundred eighty-five males were tested (ages 13-16; response rate 55%) and 86 contributed data to the analyses after exclusion for recent concussion and overlapping sports participation. Soccer players showed lower premorbid intellectual functioning, but neither soccer players nor rugby players showed neuropsychological decrement compared with noncontact sport players. Cumulative heading did not predict neuropsychological performance. While no specific attribute of soccer was linked with neuropsychological impairment, head injury predicted reduced attention for all participants.

Persistent effects of playing football and associated (subconcussive) head trauma on brain structure and function: a systematic review of the literature

“…These studies were the basis for further investigations addressing functional, structural and metabolic brain changes in football players. While some studies confirmed neurocognitive abnormalities compared with controls,28 29 others found no such evidence 14 15 30 31. Likewise, associations between neurocognitive deficits and heading frequency were reported by some,16 17 19 28 29 but not by others 14 15 30–34…”

Return to play management after concussion in football: recommendations for team physicians

“…Moreover neurocognitive impairment as for instance memory, cognitive processing speed, reaction time (Colvin et al, 2009;Harmon et al, 2013) or attention (Stephens, Rutherford, Potter, & Fernie, 2010) and affective symptoms such as depression and anxiety were reported (McCrory, Meeuwisse, Aubry et al, 2013). Neurodegenerative diseases like mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer disease (McCrory, Meeuwisse, Kutcher, Jordan, & Gardner, 2013, Godbolt et al, 2014 or chronic traumatic encephalopathy (Gavett, Stern, & McKee, 2011;McKee et al, 2009) have become object of discussion of long-term sequelae in recent years.…”

Relationship of soccer heading to computerized neurocognitive performance and symptoms among female and male youth soccer players

“…They concluded that the younger players who headed more frequently were more likely to perform poorly on neuropsychological tests than younger athletes who headed less frequently [5]. In contrast, Stephens and colleagues [20] reported no relationship between heading and a variety of neurocognitive tests among samples of high school aged soccer players. However, these previous researchers relied on paper and pencil neurocognitive tests, which may be limited in their ability to detect subtle changes from mild head impacts (i.e., heading) [21].…”

“…Several studies have investigated the neurocognitive effects of soccer heading specific to youth players [6,19,20]. Janda and his colleagues [6] reported a weak inverse relationship between the number of headers and verbal learning scores.…”