Study shows cogntive benefit of lifelong bilingualism
Seniors who have spoken two languages since childhood are faster than single-language speakers at switching from one task to another, according to a study published in the January 9 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Compared to their monolingual peers, lifelong bilinguals also show different patterns of brain activity when making the switch, the study found.
The findings suggest the value of regular stimulating mental activity across the lifetime. As people age, cognitive flexibility — the ability to adapt to unfamiliar or unexpected circumstances — and related “executive” functions decline. Recent studies suggest lifelong bilingualism may reduce this decline — a boost that may stem from the experience of constantly switching between languages. However, how brain activity differs between older bilinguals and monolinguals was previously unclear.
In the current study, Brian T. Gold, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the brain activity of healthy bilingual seniors (ages 60-68) with that of healthy monolingual seniors as they completed a task that tested their cognitive flexibility. The researchers found that both groups performed the task accurately. However, bilingual seniors were faster at completing the task than their monolingual peers despite expending less energy in the frontal cortex — an area known to be involved in task switching.
“This study provides some of the first evidence of an association between a particular cognitively stimulating activity — in this case, speaking multiple languages on a daily basis — and brain function,” said John L. Woodard, PhD, an aging expert from Wayne State University, who was not involved with the study. “The authors provide clear evidence of a different pattern of neural functioning in bilingual versus monolingual individuals.”
The researchers also measured the brain activity of younger bilingual and monolingual adults while they performed the cognitive flexibility task.
Overall, the young adults were faster than the seniors at performing the task. Being bilingual did not affect task performance or brain activity in the young participants. In contrast, older bilinguals performed the task faster than their monolingual peers and expended less energy in the frontal parts of their brain.
“This suggests that bilingual seniors use their brains more efficiently than monolingual seniors,” Gold said. “Together, these results suggest that lifelong bilingualism may exert its strongest benefits on the functioning of frontal brain regions in aging.”
(Image: Harriet Russell)
Filed under bilingualism brain activity cognitive flexibility cognition aging psychology neuroscience science
Simulated Mars Mission Reveals Body’s Sodium Rhythms
Clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D., knew he had a one-of-a-kind scientific opportunity: the Russians were going to simulate a flight to Mars, and he was invited to study the participating cosmonauts.
Titze, now an associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University, wanted to explore long-term sodium balance in humans. He didn’t believe the textbook view – that the salt we eat is rapidly excreted in urine to maintain relatively constant body sodium levels. The “Mars500” simulation gave him the chance to keep salt intake constant and monitor urine sodium levels in humans over a long period of time.
Now, in the Jan. 8 issue of Cell Metabolism, Titze and his colleagues report that – in contrast to the prevailing dogma – sodium levels fluctuate rhythmically with 7-day and monthly cycles. The findings, which demonstrate that sodium is stored in the body, have implications for blood pressure control, hypertension and salt-associated cardiovascular risk.
Titze’s interest in sodium balance was sparked by human space flight simulation studies he conducted in the 1990s that showed rhythmic variations in sodium urine excretion.
“It was so clear to me that sodium must be stored in the body, but no one wanted to hear about that because it was so different from the textbook view,” he said.
He and his team persisted with animal studies and demonstrated that the skin stores sodium and that the immune system regulates sodium release from the skin.
In 2005, planning began for Mars500 – a collaboration between Russia, the European Union and China to prepare for manned spaceflight to Mars. Mars500 was conducted at a research facility in Moscow between 2007 and 2011 in three phases: a 15-day phase to test the equipment, a 105-day phase, and a 520-day phase to simulate a full-length manned mission.
Crews of healthy male cosmonauts volunteered to live and work in an enclosed habitat of sealed interconnecting modules, as if they were on an international space station. Titze and his colleagues organized the food for the mission and secured commitments from the participants to consume all of the food and to collect all urine each day. They studied twelve men: six for the full 105-day phase of the program, and six for the first 205 days of the 520-day phase.
“It was the participants’ stamina to precisely adhere to the daily menu plans and to accurately collect their urine for months that allowed scientific discovery,” Titze said. The researchers found that nearly all (95 percent) of the ingested salt was excreted in the urine, but not on a daily basis. Instead, at constant salt intake, sodium excretion fluctuated with a weekly rhythm, resulting in sodium storage. The levels of the hormones aldosterone (a regulator of sodium excretion) and cortisol (no known major role in sodium balance) also fluctuated weekly.
Changes in total body sodium levels fluctuated on monthly and longer cycles, Titze said. Sodium storage on this longer cycle was independent of salt intake and did not include weight gain, supporting the idea that sodium is stored without accompanying increases in water.
The findings suggest that current medical practice and studies that rely on 24-hour urine samples to determine salt intake are not accurate, he said. “We understand now that there are 7-day and monthly sodium clocks that are ticking, so a one-day snapshot shouldn’t be used to determine salt intake.”
Using newly developed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies to view sodium, Titze and his colleagues have found that humans store sodium in skin (as they found in their animal studies) and in muscle.
The investigators suspect that genes related to the circadian “clock” genes, which regulate daily rhythms, may be involved in sodium storage and release. “We find these long rhythms of sodium storage in the body particularly intriguing,” Titze said. “The observations open up entirely new avenues for research.”
Filed under Mars500 simulation immune system sodium sodium balance space mission 520-day simulation neuroscience science
520-Day Simulated Mission to Mars Reveals Critical Data about Sleep and Activity Needs for Astronauts
In the first study of its kind, a team of researchers led by faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Baylor College of Medicine, has analyzed data on the impact of prolonged operational confinement on sleep, performance, and mood in astronauts from a groundbreaking international effort to simulate a 520-day space mission to Mars. The findings, published online-first in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed alterations of life-sustaining sleep patterns and neurobehavioral consequences for crew members that must be addressed for successful adaption to prolonged space missions.
"The success of human interplanetary spaceflight, which is anticipated to be in this century, will depend on the ability of astronauts to remain confined and isolated from Earth much longer than previous missions or simulations," said David F. Dinges, PhD, professor and chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine, and co-lead author of the new study. "This is the first investigation to pinpoint the crucial role that sleep-wake cycles will play in extended space missions."
The 520-day simulation, which was developed by the Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and sponsored in part by the European Space Agency (ESA), was initiated on June 3, 2010 when the hatches were closed on a 550-cubic-meter IBMP spacecraft-like confinement facility in Russia. The simulated mission, involving an international, six-man team of volunteers, involved more than 90 experiments and realistic scenarios to gather valuable psychological and medical data on the effects of a long-term deep space flight. The 520-day mission was broken into three phases: 250 days for the trip to Mars, 30 days on the surface, and 240 days for the return to Earth.
“As the only U.S. research team involved with the Mars 520-day simulation, the study required international coordination and strong collaborations to ensure that the experiments were conducted in a thorough and rigorous manner,” said Jeffrey P. Sutton, MD, PhD, professor and director, Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and senior study author. The investigators monitored the crew’s rest-activity patterns, performance and psychological responses to determine the extent to which sleep loss, fatigue, stress, mood changes and conflicts occurred during the mission.
Measurements included continuous recordings of body movements using wrist actigraphy (a noninvasive means of estimating sleep and movement intensity), and light exposure and weekly computer-based neurobehavioral assessments to identify changes in the crew’s activity levels, sleep quantity and quality, sleep–wake intervals, alertness performance, and workload throughout the 17 months of mission confinement.
Data from the actigraph devices revealed that crew sedentariness increased across the mission, as illustrated by decreased waking movement and increased sleep and rest times. The majority of crewmembers also experienced one or more disturbances of sleep quality, alertness deficits, or altered sleep–wake intervals and timing, suggesting inadequate circadian synchronization.
"Taken together, these measurements point to the need to identify markers of differential vulnerability to abnormal decrease in muscular movement and sleep– wake changes in crew members during the prolonged isolation of exploration spaceflight and the need to ensure maintenance of the Earth’s natural circadian rhythm, sleep quantity and quality, and optimal activity levels during exploration missions," said Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc, assistant professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry at Penn, and co-lead author.
The research team concludes that successful adaptation to such missions will require crews to transit in spacecraft and live in surface habitats that artificially mimic aspects of Earth’s sleep-wake activity cycles, such as appropriately timed light exposure, food intake, and exercise. This dynamic will be necessary to maintain neurocognition and human behavior throughout the flight.
Filed under 520-day simulation astronauts muscular movement sleep sleep-wake cycles space missions circadian rhythms neuroscience science
Songbird sings in 3D
The question ‘How do songbirds sing?’ is addressed in a study published in BioMed Central’s open access journal BMC Biology. High-field magnetic resonance imaging and micro-computed tomography have been used to construct stunning high resolution, 3D, images, as well as a data set “morphome” of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) vocal organ, the syrinx.
Like humans, songbirds learn their vocalizations by imitation. Since their songs are used for finding a mate and retaining territories, birdsong is very important for reproductive success.
The syrinx, located at the point where the trachea splits in two to send air to the lungs, is unique to birds and performs the same function as vocal cords in humans. Birds can have such a complete control over the syrinx, with sub-millisecond precision, that in some cases they are even able to mimic human speech.
Despite great inroads in uncovering the neural control of birdsong, the anatomy of the complex physical structures that generate sound have been less well understood.
The multinational team has generated interactive 3D PDF models of the syringeal skeleton, soft tissues, cartilaginous pads, and muscles affecting sound production. These models show in detail the delicate balance between strength, and lightness of bones and cartilage required to support and alter the vibrating membranes of the syrinx at superfast speeds.
Dr Coen Elemans, from the University of Southern Denmark, who led this study, explained, “This study provides the basis to analyze the micromechanics, and exact neural and muscular control of the syrinx. For example, we describe a cartilaginous structure which may allow the zebra finch to precisely control its songs by uncoupling sound frequency and volume.” In addition, the researchers found a previously unrecognized Y-shaped structure on the sternum which corresponds to the shape of the syrinx and could help stabilize sound production.
Filed under zebra finch songbirds singing vocalization syrinx sound production science
University of Florida researchers and colleagues have identified a protein that, when absent, helps the body burn fat and prevents insulin resistance and obesity. The findings from the National Institutes of Health-funded study were published online ahead of print Sunday, Jan. 6, in the journal Nature Medicine.
The discovery could aid development of drugs that not only prevent obesity, but also spur weight loss in people who are already overweight, said Dr. Stephen Hsu, one of the study’s corresponding authors and a principal investigator with the UF Sid Martin Biotechnology Development Institute.
One-third of adults and about 17 percent of children in the United States are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although unrelated studies have shown that lifestyle changes such as choosing healthy food over junk food and increasing exercise can help reduce obesity, people are often unable to maintain these changes over time, Hsu said.
“The problem is when these studies end and the people go off the protocols, they almost always return to old habits and end up eating the same processed foods they did before and gain back the weight they lost during the study,” he said. Developing drugs that target the protein, called TRIP-Br2, and mimic its absence may allow for the prevention of obesity without relying solely on lifestyle modifications, Hsu said.
First identified by Hsu, TRIP-Br2 helps regulate how fat is stored in and released from cells. To understand its role, the researchers compared mice that lacked the gene responsible for production of the protein, with normal mice that had the gene.
They quickly discovered that mice missing the TRIP-Br2 gene did not gain weight no matter what they ate — even when placed on a high-fat diet — and were otherwise normal and healthy. On the other hand, the mice that still made TRIP-Br2 gained weight and developed associated problems such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol when placed on a high-fat diet. The normal and fat-resistant mice ate the same amount of food, ruling out differences in food intake as a reason why the mice lacking TRIP-Br2 were leaner.
“We had to explain why the animals eating so much fat were remaining lean and not getting high cholesterol. Where was this fat going?” Hsu said. “It turns out this protein is a master regulator. It coordinates expression of a lot of genes and controls the release of the fuel form of fat and how it is metabolized.”
When functioning normally, TRIP-Br2 restricts the amount of fat that cells burn as energy. But when TRIP-Br2 is absent, a fat-burning fury seems to occur in fat cells. Although other proteins have been linked to the storage and release of fat in cells, TRIP-Br2 is unique in that it regulates how cells burn fat in a few different ways, Hsu said. When TRIP-Br2 is absent, fat cells dramatically increase the release of free fatty acids and also burn fat to produce the molecular fuel called ATP that powers mitochondria — the cell’s energy source. In addition, cells free from the influence of TRIP-Br2 start using free fatty acids to generate thermal energy, which protects the body from exposure to cold.
“TRIP-Br2 is important for the accumulation of fat,” said Dr. Rohit N. Kulkarni, also a senior author of the paper and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Joslin Diabetes Center. “When an animal lacks TRIP-Br2, it can’t accumulate fat.”
Because the studies were done mostly in mice, additional studies are still needed to see if the findings translate to humans.
“We are very optimistic about the translational promise of our findings because we showed that only human subjects who had the kind of fat (visceral) that becomes insulin-resistant also had high protein levels of TRIP-Br2,” Hsu said.
“Imagine you are able to develop drugs that pharmacologically mimic the complete absence of TRIP-Br2,” Hsu said. “If a patient started off fat, he or she would burn the weight off. If people are at risk of obesity and its associated conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, it would help keep them lean regardless of how much fat they ate. That is the ideal anti-obesity drug, one that prevents obesity and helps people burn off excess weight.”
(Source: news.ufl.edu)
Filed under obesity protein weight-loss genes type II diabetes fat cells science
The Living Lab: Navigating into cells
How do viruses attach to cells? How do proteins interact and mediate infection? How do molecular machines organize themselves in healthy cells? How do they differ in diseased cells? These are the types of questions National Institutes of Health researchers ask in the recently established Living Lab for Structural Biology, questions they strive to answer through the most sophisticated of imaging techniques.
The Living Lab is an innovative partnership between NIH and FEI, an Oregon-based instrumentation company that manufactures advanced microscopes. FEI brings to the table invaluable assistance in developing and customizing electron microscopes for biological applications. Using that cutting edge technology, scientists in the Living Lab, unencumbered by any pressure to patent or otherwise protect discoveries for commercial purposes, can proceed purely driven by scientific and biomedical puzzles. Success of the Living Lab, which is on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., will rest on that collaboration between the government and the private sector—and the idea that answering scientific questions and technical advancement go hand in hand.
“We want to navigate our way into cells and into viruses,” said Sriram Subramaniam, Ph. D., director of the NIH component of the Living Lab. “We would like to be able to describe the function of complex things, such as whole cells or infectious viruses, in terms of their molecular make-up, and try to figure out how they work.”
The Living Lab’s advanced imaging technology allows researchers to tackle previously unanswered questions in structural biology by creating three-dimensional shapes of various molecular machines. Visualizing tiny details is a step toward understanding the molecular origins of disease. “The prospects for studying structures of a broad spectrum of medically relevant complexes at minute resolutions has changed dramatically in recent years with advances in structural biology,” said Subramaniam. “Our goal with the Living Lab is to capture the synergy between all of these methods including the latest advances in cryo-electron microscopy to extend these advances to key scientific challenges in modern structural biology.”
Subramaniam, who earned his doctorate at Stanford University and did post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in chemistry and biology, directs the research activities of the Living Lab, in close consultation with other team members from FEI and from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
Filed under Living Lab cells cancer cells electron microscopes cryo-electron microscopy biology medicine science
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? How the brain codes its surroundings beyond the field of view
Even when they are not directly in sight, we are aware of our surroundings: so it is that when our eyes are fixed on an interesting book, for example, we know that the door is to the right, the bookshelf is to the left and the window is behind us. However, research into the brain has so far concerned itself predominantly with how information from our field of vision is coded in the visual cortex. To date it has not been known how the brain codes our surroundings beyond the field of view from an egocentric perspective (that is, from the point of view of the observer).
In the latest issue of the renowned journal Current Biology, Andreas Schindler und Andreas Bartels, scientists at the Werner Reichardt Center for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) of the University of Tübingen, present for the first time direct evidence of this kind of spatial information in the brain.
The participants in their study found themselves in the center of a virtual octagonal room, with a unique object in each corner. As the brain’s activity was monitored by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging, the participants stood in front of one corner and looked at its object. Now they were instructed to determine the position of a second randomly chosen object within the room relative to their current perspective (for example, the object behind them). After a few trials the participant turned around so that the next object was brought into the field of view and the task was set up again. The whole procedure was repeated until every object had been looked at once.
The scientists discovered that patterns of activity in the parietal cortex code the participant’s egocentric position, that is, the relative position to his or her surroundings. The spatial information discovered there proved to be independent of the particular object, its absolute position in the room or that of the observer – i.e. it encoded egocentric spatial information of the three-dimensional surroundings. This result turns out to be particularly interesting because damage to the brain in the parietal cortex can lead to serious disruption of egocentric spatial awareness. Hence it is difficult for patients suffering from optical ataxia to carry out coordinated grasping movements. Lesions in the parietal cortex can also lead to a symptom called spatial neglect where patients have difficulties in perceiving their surroundings on the side opposite to the lesion. The brain areas identified in the present study coincided precisely with the areas of brain damage in such patients and provide for the first time insights regarding their function in the healthy brain.
Filed under brain brain activity visual cortex spatial awareness parietal cortex neuroscience science
Why Do Age-Related Macular Degeneration Patients Have Trouble Recognizing Faces?
Abnormalities of eye movement and fixation may contribute to difficulty in perceiving and recognizing faces among older adults with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), suggests a study “Abnormal Fixation in Individuals with AMD when Viewing an Image of a Face” appearing in the January issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Unlike people with normal vision focus, those with AMD don’t focus on “internal features” (the eyes, nose and mouth) when looking at the image of a face, according to the study by William Seiple, PhD, and colleagues of Lighthouse International, New York.
When Viewing Famous Face, AMD Patients Focus on External Features
The researchers used a sophisticated technique called optical coherence tomography/scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (OCT-SLO) to examine the interior of the eye in nine patients with AMD. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of vision loss in older adults. It causes gradual destruction of the macula, leading to blurring and loss of central vision.
Previous studies have suggested that people with AMD have difficulty perceiving faces. To evaluate the possible role of abnormal eye movements, Dr Seiple and colleagues used the OCT-SLO equipment to make microscopic movies of the interior of the eye (fundus, including the retina and macula) as the patients viewed one of the world’s most famous faces: the Mona Lisa.
This technique allowed the researchers to record eye movements and where the patients looked (fixations) while looking at the face. They compared the findings in AMD patients to a control group of subjects with normal vision.
The results showed significant differences in eye movement patterns and fixations between groups. The AMD patients had fewer fixations on the internal features of the Mona Lisa’s face—eyes, nose, and mouth. For controls, an average of 87 percent of fixations were on internal features, compared to only 13 percent on external features. In contrast, for AMD patients, 62 percent of fixations were on internal features while 38 percent were on external features.
The normal controls also tended to make fewer and shorter eye movements (called saccades) than AMD patients. The differences between groups did not appear to be related to the blurring of vision associated with AMD.
Some older adults with AMD report difficulties perceiving faces. While the problem in “processing faces” is certainly related to the overall sensory visual loss, the new evidence suggests that specific patterns of eye movement abnormalities may also play a role.
Dr Seiple and colleagues note that “abnormal scanning patterns when viewing faces” have also been found in other conditions associated with difficulties in face perception, including autism, social phobias, and schizophrenia. The authors discuss the possible mechanisms of the abnormal scanning patterns in AMD, involving the complex interplay between the eyes and brain in governing eye movement and interpreting visual information.
A previous study suggested that drawing attention to specific characteristics—such as the internal facial features—may increase fixations on internal features and improve face perception. Dr Seiple and coauthors conclude, “That report gives hope that eye movement control training and training of allocation of attention could improve face perception and eye scanning behavior in individuals with AMD.”
Filed under macular degeneration eye movements face recognition AMD vision aging optical coherence tomography science
Scientists have wrestled to understand why Huntington’s disease, which is caused by a single gene mutation, can produce such variable symptoms. An authoritative review by a group of leading experts summarizes the progress relating cell loss in the striatum and cerebral cortex to symptom profile in Huntington’s disease, suggesting a possible direction for developing targeted therapies. The article is published in the latest issue of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease.
Huntington’s disease (HD) is an inherited progressive neurological disorder for which there is presently no cure. It is caused by a dominant mutation in the HD gene leading to expression of mutant huntingtin (HTT) protein. Expression of mutant HTT causes subtle changes in cellular functions, which ultimately results in jerking, uncontrollable movements, progressive psychiatric difficulties, and loss of mental abilities.
Although it is caused by a single gene, there are major variations in the symptoms of HD. The pattern of symptoms shown by each individual during the course of the disease can differ considerably and present as varying degrees of movement disturbances, cognitive decline, and mood and behavioral changes. Disease duration is typically between ten and twenty years.
Recent investigations have focused on what the presence of the defective gene does to various structures in the brain and understanding the relationship between changes in the brain and the variability in symptom profiles in Huntington’s disease.
Analyses of post-mortem human HD tissue suggest that the variation in clinical symptoms in HD is strongly associated with the variable pattern of neurodegeneration in two major regions of the brain, the striatum and the cerebral cortex. The neurodegeneration of the striatum generally follows an ordered and topographical distribution, but comparison of post-mortem human HD tissue and in vivo neuroimaging techniques reveal that the disease produces a striking bilateral atrophy of the striatum, which in these recent studies has been found to be highly variable.
“What is especially interesting is that recent findings suggest that the pattern of striatal cell death shows regional differences between cases in the functionally and neurochemically distinct striosomal and matrix compartments of the striatum which correspond with symptom variation,” says author Richard L.M. Faull, MB, ChB, PhD, DSc, Director of the Centre for Brain Research, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
“Our own recent detailed quantitative study using stereological cell counting in the post-mortem human HD cortex has complemented and expanded the neuroimaging studies by providing a cortical cellular basis of symptom heterogeneity in HD,” continues Dr Faull. “In particular, HD cases which were dominated by motor dysfunction showed a major total cell loss (28% loss) in the primary motor cortex but no cell loss in the limbic cingulate cortex, whereas cases where mood symptoms predominated showed a total of 54% neuronal loss in the limbic cingulate cortex but no cell loss in the motor cortex. This suggests that the variable neuronal loss and alterations in the circuitry of the primary motor cortex and anterior cingulate cortex associated with the variable compartmental pattern of cell degeneration in the striatum contribute to the differential impairments of motor and mood functions in HD.”
The authors note that there are still questions to be answered in the field of HD pathology, such as, how and when pathological neuronal loss occurs; whether the progressive loss of neurons in the striatum is the primary process or is consequential to cortical cell dysfunction; and how these changes relate to symptom profiles.
“What is clear however is that the diverse symptoms of HD patients appear to relate to the heterogeneity of cell loss in both the striatum and cerebral cortex,” the authors conclude. “While there is currently no cure, this contemporary evidence suggests that possible genetic therapies aimed at HD gene silencing should be directed towards intervention at both the cerebral cortex and the striatum in the human brain. This poses challenging problems requiring the application of gene silencing therapies to quite widespread regions of the forebrain which may be assisted via CSF delivery systems using gene suppression agents that cross the CSF/brain barrier.”
(Source: iospress.nl)
Filed under huntington’s disease neurodegeneration cell loss neuroimaging cognitive decline neuroscience science
Cognitive deficits from concussions still present after two months
The ability to focus and switch tasks readily amid distractions was compromised for up to two months following brain concussions suffered by high school athletes, according to a study at the University of Oregon.
Research team members, in an interview, said the discovery suggests that some athletes may need longer recovery periods than current practices dictate to lower the risk of subsequent concussions. Conventional wisdom, said lead author David Howell, a graduate student in the UO Department of Human Physiology, says that typical recovery from concussion takes seven to 10 days.
"The differences we detected may be a matter of milliseconds between a concussed person and a control subject, but as far as brain time goes that difference for a linebacker returning to competition too soon could mean the difference between another injury or successfully preparing to safely tackle an oncoming running back," Howell said.
The findings are based on cognitive exercises used five times over the two months with a pair of sensitive computer-based measuring tools — the attentional network test and the task-switching test. The study focused on the effects of concussions to the frontal region of the brain, which is responsible for working, or short-term, memory and executive function, said Li-Shan Chou, professor of human physiology and director of the UO Motion Analysis Laboratory.
The study was published online ahead of print by Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.
Filed under brain concussion brain injury cognitive deficits psychology neuroscience science
