The ENIGMA Sports Injury Working Group: an International Collaboration to Further our Understanding of Sports-Related Brain Injury

Abstract

Sports-related brain injury is very common, and the potential long-term effects include a widerange of neurological and psychiatric symptoms, and potentially neurodegeneration. Aroundthe globe, researchers are conducting neuroimaging studies on primarily homogenoussamples of athletes. However, neuroimaging studies are expensive and time consuming, andthus current findings from studies of sports-related brain injury are often limited by smallsample size. Further, current studies apply a variety of neuroimaging techniques and analysistools which limit comparability among studies. The ENIGMA Sports Injury working group aimsto provide a platform for data sharing and collaborative data analysis thereby leveragingexisting data and expertise. By harmonizing data from a large number of studies from aroundthe globe, we will work towards reproducibility of previously published findings and towardsaddressing important research questions with regard to diagnosis, prognosis, and efficacy oftreatment for sport-related brain injury. Moreover, the ENIGMA Sports Injury working group iscommitted to providing recommendations for future prospective data acquisition to enhancefurther, both, data quality and scientific rigor.

ENIGMA brain injury: Framework, challenges, and opportunities

“…1 Establish a collaborative international network of researchers focused on TBI, including neuroimaging, clinical, cognitive, neuro- In addition, each working group has research questions specific to their patient population which are discussed in greater detail in recent papers by each subgroup (Dennis, et al, in press;Esopenko et al, 2019;Koerte et al, 2020;Tate et al, 2019).…”

“…However, with the development of new subgroups within the Brain Injury Group, our mission is to harmonize both the measures collected and analysis pipelines used across sites. Recently, a number of sub-groups within our Brain Injury group have provided recommendations for specific neuroimaging and neuropsychological measures sensitive to domains impacted by different mechanisms of brain injury (e.g., head trauma associated with intimate partner violence, concussive and subconcussive impacts associated with sports-related concussion, blast injury in military personnel and veterans), age of injury (e.g., pediatric, adult), severity of injury (mild, moderate, and severe TBI), or imaging modality (MRS; Bartnik-Olson et al, in press;Dennis, et al, in press;Esopenko et al, 2019;Koerte et al, 2020;Tate et al, 2019). We also provide recommendations on specific genetic variations that warrant investigation across injury populations.…”

“…For more details on the working groups including more depth regarding population-specific considerations (i.e., blast TBI in military or repetitive impacts in sports) and planned analyses, we refer the interested reader to a recent special issue to be published in Brain Imaging and Behavior (preprints currently available on PsyArxiv; Bartnik-Olson et al, in press;Dennis et al, in press;Esopenko et al, 2019;Koerte et al, 2020;Tate et al, 2019;Wilde, Dennis, & Tate, 2019). Across these working groups, there are currently over 150 collaborators involved from 76 institutions and 13 countries.…”