Investigating the association between head acceleration events and neurocognitive impairment in elite mountain bikers

While mountain biking is a sport of growing popularity among adolescents and adults alike, it is also notoriously injurious. Mountain biking is associated with high rates of head injuries, and exposure to sub-concussive head acceleration events. Despite this, limited research has investigated the extent to which mountain biking participation contributes to brain injury and cognitive impairment. Novel neuroimaging technology for Neurocatch allows for a standard, sensitive on-site evaluation of the potential neurophysiological changes associated with extreme sport exposure such as mountain biking. As the intern and industry partner are both avid mountain bikers, they are leveraging the novel neuro-imaging technology and access to the mountain bike community to better understand the neurological exposure of the mountain biking participation. The proposed research will investigate the associated neural and cognitive changes following a mountain biking run and explore how this relates to the number of head accelerations sustained by the mountain biker.

Faculty Supervisor:

Carolyn Emery;Jonathan Smirl

Student:

Partner:

NeuroCatch Inc.

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Technology

University:

University of Calgary

Program: