JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Concussion has been a major public health concern due to the substantial cognitive sequelae it results. Although the dysfunctions of the frontal lobe and corpus callosum owing to concussions have been documented, the existing concussion screening tools merely examine cognitive functions in isolation of motor functions and failed to detect the chronic cognitive-motor impairments following concussions. Yet, there has been no concussion screening test aimed specifically to assess the coupled cognitive-motor functions.

Objective:

The current study aimed to provide preliminary evidence for using computerized eye-hand coordination tasks to detect chronic cognitive-motor deficits associated with concussion history.

Methods:

The computerized eye-hand coordination tasks were used to assess the coupled cognitive-motor functions of the participants with and without a history of concussion. In Experiment 1, a total of 12 participants (6 young adults with a concussion history and 6 healthy controls) completed longitudinal assessments of coordination profiles across a year. Experiment 2 examined a total of 20 participants (10 concussed participants and 10 healthy controls) using an iterated single-session protocol. Just Noticeable Difference (JND) and Proportion of Time-on-Task (PTT) were used to assess cognitive-motor performance. Mixed-design ANOVAs were used to examine group differences and the effect sizes were assessed using Cohen’s d test.

Results:

In Experiment 1, concussed participants exhibited more inconsistent ability to visually discriminate the in-phase coordination pattern, while their performance in producing unimanual and bimanual in-phase and anti-phase coordination patterns were consistently poorer than the healthy controls (P’s < .05). In Experiment 2 where only the unimanual coordination tasks were implemented for screening, concussed participants showed impaired performance in both in-phase and anti-phase tasks, and they also failed to show the differentiated performance between anti-phase and 90 coordination patterns.

Conclusions:

Due to their ability to detect both impaired and undifferentiated performance in producing intrinsic and novel coordination patterns, the unimanual coordination tasks appear to be a sensitive screening tool for chronic cognitive-motor deficits associated with concussion history.