Personal Injury Law

fMRI Scanning in Traumatic Brain Injuries

By Bruce Stern

The information learned from fMRI scanning is certainly breathtaking.  I recently read another interesting article with regard to the use of fMRI with patients who sustained a traumatic brain injury. 

This article published in the archives of General Psychiatry/Volume 60 (No. 1) January 2008, entitled “Neural substrates of symptoms of depression following concussion in male athletes with persistent post-concussion symptoms” looked at whether the symptoms of depression reflect an ongoing pathopsysiological change following concussion. 

The authors Chen, Johnston, Petrides and Ptito from the Montreal Neurological Institute and Magill University, and the Concussion Clinic Neurorehabilitation Program, Toronto Rehabilitation Division of Neurosurgery, University of Toronto examined 56 male athletes with and without concussion who were divided into four separate groups.  The four groups were one, a no depression symptom, concussed group; a mild depressed symptom, concussed group; a moderate depression symptom, concussed group and a healthy control group.  All athletes filled out a post-concussive symptoms checklist and the bet depression inventory II and then underwent a MRI session which included T1, T2 and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery sequences as well as functional MRI during which they performed a working memory test. 

The results indicated that behaviorally there was no performance differences between the groups.  However, imaging, athletes with concussion with depressed symptoms showed reduced activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and striatum and attenuated deactivation in medial frontal and temporal lesions.  The severity of symptoms of depression correlated with neuroresponses in brain areas that are implicated in major depression. 

The authors concluded that the results suggested that depressed mood following a concussion might reflect an underlying pathophysiology consistent with a limbic-frontal model of depression.  Given that depression is associated with considerable functional disability, the authors believe that this finding will have important clinical implications in the management of individuals with a cerebral concussion.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on January 24, 2008 (boomark / email).