Auditory processing may be more sensitive than the other domains currently involved in concussion assessment. The authors found that the brain's response to a sound's pitch-that part of sound that distinguishes notes on a piano or different voices-is poorer in contact athletes compared to non-contact athletes. Unlike current concussion tests, which assess balance, vision and cognition, the FFR examines auditory processing. The FFR is both objective and easy to obtain. The biological measure, called the frequency-following response (FFR), is obtained by placing a few sensors on the athlete's head and playing sounds to their ear. "Identifying what is 'too much' for an individual player could preclude the need for sweeping changes to be made to the game." "By discovering the proverbial 'canary in the coalmine,' we can increase player safety without compromising the sports we love," Kraus said. "There has been no way to know if or when an athlete will reach their tipping point-that subconcussive hit when CTE becomes an inevitable consequence of repeated subconcussions," said Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology and Otolaryngology in the School of Communication at Northwestern, who served as senior author on the study. Some athletes' brains do not change from these repeated hits, but for others, subconcussions have been shown to cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degeneration of the brain that leads to mood instability and problems with memory, focus and thinking.Ī study resulting from a joint collaboration between Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory and Northwestern University Athletics and Recreation and published in the journal Exercise, Sport, and Movement has uncovered a brain measure that could one day help to identify an athlete's tipping point. Player-to-player or player-to-ground contacts in football, elbows to the head in basketball, or heading the ball in soccer cause subconcussions, injuries to the brain that are insufficient to cause the acute symptoms of a diagnosable concussion. Yet, accumulating evidence shows that the smaller hits also adversely affect the brain over time.
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