Tracking head impacts to better protect young athletes’ brains
Dr Spencer Roberts is examining the effects of head impacts on adolescent rugby players to better understand and protect against potentially harmful injury on young brains.
Existing research on former collision-sport athletes, including rugby and American football players, indicates that repeated exposure to head impacts may increase the risk of mental illness, cognitive decline, and neurodegenerative diseases later in life.
Some evidence suggests the age at which athletes first experience head impacts and the duration of their exposure are risk factors for these outcomes.
Despite the high concussion rates among youth rugby players, little research has been conducted to understand the specific risks and brain responses in this demographic.
Dr Spencer Roberts’ study seeks to fill that gap by focusing on adolescent players during a critical phase of brain development.
For the study, adolescent rugby players are asked to use instrumented mouthguards during training and games to measure the frequency and magnitude of impacts across one to two seasons.
The players undergo MRI brain scans and blood tests to track brain responses over time.
They will also wear wrist devices to monitor their sleep to better understand the potential protective role of adequate sleep for brain health when players are frequently exposed to head impacts.
Dr Roberts hopes to gain a better understanding of specific head impact patterns that may be harmful for adolescent athletes and to improve diagnostic techniques through neuroimaging and blood tests.
He also wants to determine if adequate sleep is protective of brain health in these athletes and should be targeted more explicitly (in education and treatment) for collision sport athletes.
“The research will change how we view non-concussive head impacts and the cumulative effect of head impact exposures over time, helping us to develop new strategies for managing head impact risks and exposures in athletes,” Dr Roberts said.
“It will also contribute to new tools for diagnosing and monitoring brain injury – which at present is a largely subjective process requiring self-report of symptoms.”
The project involves a multidisciplinary (brain imaging, fluid biomarker, sleep experts) team from Deakin and Monash Universities, and uses mouthguards from Melbourne-based company, HITiQ.
