A new study of high school football players found that concussions affect an often-overlooked but important brain signal. The findings are being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Reports have emerged in recent years warning about the potential harms of youth contact sports on developing brains.
Contact sports, including high school football, carry a risk of concussion. Symptoms of concussion commonly include cognitive disturbances, such as difficulty with balancing, memory or concentration. Many concussion studies focus on periodic brain signals.
These signals appear in rhythmic patterns and contribute to brain functions such as attention, movement or sensory processing. Not much is known about how concussions affect other aspects of brain function, specifically, brain signals that are not rhythmic. Most previous neuroscience research has focused on rhythmic brain signaling, which is also called periodic neurophysiology.
On the other hand, aperiodic neurophysiology refers to brain signals that are not rhythmic." Kevin C. Yu, B.
S., study lead author, neuroscience student at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina Aperiodic activity is typically treated as 'background noise' on brain scans, but recent studies have shown that this background noise may play a key role in how the brain functions. "While it's often overlooked, aperiodic activity is important because it reflects brain cor.
