Introductory Chapter Concussion in Athletics: Ongoing Controversy [chapter]

Semyon Slobounov, Wayne Sebastianelli
Foundations of Sport-Related Brain Injuries  
Multiple traumas to the brain are the most common type of catastrophic injury and a leading cause of death in athletes. Multiple brain injuries may occur as the long-term disabilities resulting from a single mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI, generally known as concussion) are often overlooked and the most obvious clinical symptoms appear to resolve rapidly. One of the reasons of controversy about concussion is that most previous research has: a) failed to provide the pre-injury status of MBTI
more » ... ubjects which may lead to misdiagnosis following a single brain injury of the persistent or new neurological and behavioral deficits; b) focused primarily on transient deficits after single MTBI, and failed to examine for long-term deficits and multiple MTBI; c) focused primarily on cognitive or behavioral sequelae of MTBI in isolation; and d) failed to predict athletes at risk for traumatic brain injury. It is necessary to examine for both transient and long-term behavioral, sensory-motor, cognitive, and underlying neural mechanisms that are interactively affected by MTBI. A multidisciplinary approach using advanced technologies and assessment tools may dramatically enhance our understanding of this most puzzling neurological disorder facing the sport medicine world today. This is a major objective of this chapter and the whole book at least in part to resolve existing controversies about concussion.
doi:10.1007/0-387-32565-4_1 fatcat:e5f4cctyebb3bi4hyyu24h5g3y