Concussion acutely disrupts auditory processing in division I football student-athletes

Diagnosis, assessment, and management of sports-related concussion require a multi-modal approach. Yet, currently, an objective assessment of auditory processing is not included. The auditory system is uniquely complex, relying on exquisite temporal precision to integrate signals across many synapses, connected by long axons. Given this complexity and precision, together with the fact that axons are highly susceptible to damage from mechanical force, we hypothesize that auditory processing is susceptible to concussive injury.

We measured the frequency-following response (FFR), a scalp-recorded evoked potential that assesses processing of complex sound features, including pitch and phonetic identity. FFRs were obtained on male Division I Collegiate football players prior to contact practice to determine a pre-season baseline of auditory processing abilities, and again after sustaining a sports-related concussion. We predicted that concussion would decrease pitch and phonetic processing relative to the student-athlete's preseason baseline.

We found that pitch and phonetic encoding was smaller post-concussion. Student-athletes who sustained a second concussion showed similar declines after each injury.

Auditory processing should be included in the multimodal assessment of sports-related concussion. Future studies that extend this work to other sports, other injuries (e.g. blast exposure), and to female athletes are needed.