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Biomedical subjects

B L Brooks

Publications and source records attributed to B L Brooks.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

No cumulative effects for one or two previous concussions.

BACKGROUND: Sports medicine clinicians and the general public are interested in the possible cumulative effects of concussion. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether athletes with a history of one or two previous concussions differed in their preseason neuropsychological test performances or symptom reporting. METHOD: Participants were 867 male high school and university amateur athletes who completed preseason testing with ImPACT version 2.0. They were sorted into three groups on the basis of number of previous concussions. There were 664 athletes with no previous concussions, 149 with one previous concussion, and 54 with two previous concussions. Multivariate analysis of variance was conducted using the verbal memory, visual memory, reaction time, processing speed, and postconcussion symptom composite scores as dependent variables and group membership as the independent variable. RESULTS: There was no significant multivariate effect, nor were there any significant main effects for individual scores. There was no measurable effect of one or two previous concussions on athletes' preseason neuropsychological test performance or symptom reporting. CONCLUSION: If there is a cumulative effect of one or two previous concussions, it is very small and undetectable using this methodology.

Adolescent↗

Calibrating space: exploration is important for allothetic and idiothetic navigation.

Allothetic and idiothetic navigation strategies rely on very different cues and computational procedures. Allothetic navigation uses the relationships between external cues (visual, auditory, and olfactory) and mapping or geometrical calculations to locate places. Idiothetic navigation relies on cues generated by self-movement (proprioceptive cues or cues from optic, auditory, and olfactory flow, or efference copy of motor commands) and path integration to locate a present location and/or a starting point. Whereas it is theorized that exploratory behavior is used by animals to create a central representation of allothetic cues, it is unclear whether exploration plays a role in idiothetic navigation. Computational models suggest that either a reference frame, calibrated by exploration, or vector addition, without reference to exploration, could support path integration. The present study evaluated the contribution of exploration in these navigation strategies by comparing its contribution to the solution of both allothetic and idiothetic navigation problems. In two experiments, rats were trained to forage on an open table for large food pellets, which they then carried to a refuge to eat. Once trained, they were given probe trials from novel locations in either normal light, which permits the use of allothetic cues, or in infrared light, which requires the use of idiothetic cues. When faced with a new problem in either lighting condition, the rats first explored the foraging table before navigating directly home with the food. That exploration is equally important for allothetic and idiothetic navigation, suggests that both navigation strategies require a calibrated representation of the environment.

Animals↗