Presenter(s): Ravahn Enayati
Faculty Mentor(s): Li-Shan Chou & Will Pitt
Poster 13
Session: Sciences
While mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, is typically associated with athletics, head trauma is widespread in the battlefield and combat training, as evidenced by 294,010 documented cases of mTBI in the Department of Defense between 2000 and 2016. It has been shown that veteran subjects with chronic mTBI continue to suffer from subjective symptoms. It is reasonable to believe they may also continue to exhibit impairment in their gait stability when tested under a dual-task condition. Eight healthy veterans (1F; 33.93.8) and eight veteran subjects diagnosed with chronic mTBI (1F; 32.36.5 years old) had their gait imbalance tested. Each subject walked barefoot in two conditions. The first condition involved each veteran providing their undivided attention toward their movements (single-task). The second condition had each subject concurrently completing a continuous auditory Stroop test, which consisted of the individual listening to different auditory stimuli and attempting to correctly identify the pitch (dual-task). A camera motion analysis system was used to collect imaging of each subject’s movements during both conditions. A significant difference was found in medial-lateral displacement (p=0.007) and in the interaction effect of group and condition for peak medial- lateral velocity (p = 0.012). These results indicate that the veterans that suffer from chronic mTBI suffer from certain gait imbalances compared to a control veteran cohort. This information can be used to understand the physiological effects of chronic mTBI and to develop policy for the protection of mental health of military personnel.