Brain Injury and Sports Concussion Institute

Football players colliding for a head injury

 The comprehensive study, understanding, and treatment of traumatic brain injury and sports concussion, and the reduction of neurologic risk in youth and adult athletes and other clinical populations.

Introduction

The Centers for Disease Control estimate that there are in excess of two million medically identified mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (mTBI) in the United States alone, and the number of unreported mTBIs may be ten times that amount.  Although most patients who suffer such trauma in automobile accidents, falls, or during sports activities make excellent recoveries within one to three months post injury, a substantial subgroup of patients demonstrate Post Concussion Syndrome (PCS).  Post Concussion Syndrome is characterized as slow and incomplete recovery with a sometimes enduring set of medical, cognitive, and emotional symptoms such as headache, dizziness, memory impairment, slowed thought processing, attentional deficits, pain, sleep disturbance, irritability, emotional dyscontrol, and amotivation.  The Wall Street Journal referred to mTBI as the “Silent Epidemic,” and the term “Miserable Minority” has been used to describe those patients who suffer from complicated mTBIs and PCS.  In addition, research over the past two decades suggests that multiple mTBIs, in rapid succession, can result in severe morbidity or mortality in rare cases (i.e., the Second Impact Syndrome noted in sports) or in the early development of degenerative neurologic conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.  The long-term effects of multiple concussions, although speculated to be significant, have yet to be determined.

 

In the early 1980’s, the University of Virginia Department of Neurological Surgery and the Neuropsychology Laboratory in the Department of Psychiatric Medicine initiated landmark epidemiological studies in large clinical populations (Rimel et al, 1981; Barth et al 1983), which documented the mTBI problem.  Our research team went on to pioneer the Sports as a Laboratory Assessment Model (SLAM) to study clinical aspects of concussion and mild and moderate traumatic brain injury using acceleration-deceleration models seen in sports, to approximate the type of trauma sustained in automobile accidents.  Our evaluation of over 2300 college football players with approximately 200 concussions (Barth, et al 1989; Macciocchi et al, 1996) set the standard for concussion/mTBI assessment research and provided the first and only empirical foundation for return to play criteria after acceleration-deceleration injury (Barth, 1999). 

 

The development of the University of Virginia Brain Injury and Sports Concussion (BISC) Institute as a one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary center of excellence involving the Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Education, and Arts and Sciences, as well as the Department of Athletics, is the natural progression of our commitment to:

 

  • The comprehensive study and understanding of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and sports concussion.
  • Cutting edge interdisciplinary neurocognitive, neurophysiological, imaging, genetics, proteomics, and engineering-physics-mathematics brain injury research.
  • The clinical assessment, intervention, management and prevention of sports concussion and other neurotrauma.
  • Postgraduate education and training in the area of TBI, sports concussion, and neuroscience.
  • Information dissemination and the development and shaping of public policy with regard to head trauma in sports and other clinical populations.

Faculty

Jeffrey T. Barth, Ph.D.,

Donna K. Broshek, Ph.D.,

Scott D. Bender, Ph.D.

Jason R. Freeman, Ph.D.