Long-term cognitive and affective consequences of mild traumatic brain injury: comparison with older adults

Memory and affective processing were compared in young adults with a remote mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), to healthy younger and older adults. We evaluated memory performance when encoding was done under multi-tasking (divided attention) conditions, likely to exacerbate cognitive and psychological symptoms in mTBI.

Participants studied pairs of unrelated words under either full or divided attention conditions. Memory for single words (item memory) and for pairs of words (associative memory) was then assessed in sequential independent recognition tests, under full attention.

Associative memory was poorer than item memory, and worse when encoding was done under divided than full attention. The decline in recognition accuracy from full to divided attention conditions on the associative memory test was significantly greater in mTBI compared to young adults and was similar in magnitude to that observed in older adults under full attention. Self-reported mental and total fatigue increased significantly as performance on the memory tests, following the divided attention condition, decreased, but only in the mTBI group.

Results show lingering memory deficits, and suggest that cognitive tasks may be experienced as psychologically more demanding in those with a mTBI, even months or years after injury.