Presenter(s): Ravahn Enayati − Human Physiology
Faculty Mentor(s): Li-Shan Chou, Will Pitt
Poster 28
Research Area: Physical Science
While 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 veteran subjects diagnosed with chronic mTBI (1F; 32.3 6.5 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. The results were then compared with those of an acutely concussed group of athletes which had a statistically significant gait deficit. The one-time test of the veteran group was compared with five different time points from the acute sample. The results found that in the dual-task condition, there was no statistically significant difference between the medial-lateral sway of the chronic veterans and the acutely concussed athletes. This indicates that the veterans that suffer from chronic mTBI suffer similar gait imbalance as the acutely concussed athletes.