View clinical trials related to Concussion, Mild.
Filter by:The purpose of the research study is to understand the effectiveness of a six-week course of light exposure on cognitive functioning, mood, activity, and sleep in people that have suffered a head injury leading to a concussion.
The goal of this study is to learn more about how Inner Resources for Veterans (IRV), a mindfulness and mantra therapy, helps Veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). PTSD is a disorder that occurs after exposure to one or more emotionally traumatic experiences. People with PTSD may experience anxiety, pay extra attention to their surroundings, involuntarily remember their traumatic experiences, and/or want to avoid situations where these symptoms are increased. MTBI may result from being in a blast explosion, with pressure from the blast potentially disrupting the brain's structure and function. At this time, it is not well known how PTSD and mTBI may affect each other. In this study, the investigators will be looking at the behavioral and neurological changes (changes in the brain) and the reductions in PTSD symptoms that may come from participating in this treatment. The investigators are interested in determining if treatment does reverse changes in the brain caused by PTSD and mTBI. To help the investigators understand changes in how the brain functions, the participants will complete a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan before and after either IRV or an active control group. Both conditions are 9-session, 12-week interventions. Participation will help the investigators understand how therapy for PTSD and mTBI impacts the brain's response to emotions and therapeutic processes.
The objective of the study is to determine the relative roles for various testing modalities in the diagnosis and prognosis of mild traumatic brain injury.
This study is designed to evaluate the use of a collection of tests that measure the eye response, balance, oculomotor and reaction time tests to aid in the diagnosis of mTBI. The tests use highly precise measurement tools to assess various neurologic functions. (For example, high-speed cameras to record eye movement, high-end motors to precisely spin and move the subject, comprehensive analysis to stitch together the stimulus and the response.) Hypotheses: 1. A battery of oculomotor, vestibular and reaction time tests will generate variables that when properly weighted and run through a given multi-variant analysis, will separate the subjects into one of two groups, mTBI or not-mTBI. 2. A battery of neurologic assessment tests including reaction time, vestibular and oculomotor tests taxing a range of neurologic functions and executed using one or more of the I-Portal® family of devices, will generate responses that, when used by a trained physician, can aid in the diagnosis of an mTBI.
Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) or "concussions" are an increasingly prevalent injury in our society. Patients with post-concussion syndrome have been shown to have deficits on tests of short term memory, divided attention, multi-tasking, information processing speed, and reaction time, as well as alteration in mood and emotional functioning. Many patients have other vague complaints including fatigue, dizziness, irritability, sleep disturbances, and chronic headaches. Furthermore, sleep disruption of one of the most common complaints in patients suffering from traumatic brain injuries, with as many as 40 to 65% of patients with mTBI complaining of insomnia. Sleep problems in these patients are associated with poorer outcome, while resolution of the sleep disturbance is associated with improvement in cognitive functioning. Despite recent evidence of the correlation between sleep quality and recovery from traumatic brain injury, and the well-established role of sleep in neural plasticity and neurogenesis, there have been virtually no direct studies of the causal effects of sleep on recovery following mTBI. However, it is quite likely that sleep plays a critical role in recovery following brain injury. A particularly promising non-pharmacologic approach that shows potential in improving/modifying abnormalities of the circadian rhythm and sleep-wake schedule is bright light therapy. For the proposed investigation, we hypothesize that bright light therapy may be helpful in improving the sleep of patients with a recent history of mTBI and may also have other mood elevating effects, both of which should promote positive treatment outcome in these individuals. Bright light therapy may increase the likelihood that they will recover more quickly, benefit more extensively from other forms of therapy, and build emotional and cognitive resilience.