Effects of Youth Sport Participation on Neural Processing During Response Inhibition in Children

Youth sports offer many benefits to developing children, but collision sports introduce additional risks from exposure to repetitive head impacts. Past research has linked this exposure to reduced cognitive performance, including response inhibition. The current study aimed to probe how participation in collision sports affects inhibitory control in current youth collision sport athletes, compared with peers who participate in non-contact sports or non-sport activities.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging data acquired in the context of a response inhibition task from the Lifespan Human Connectome Project Development Study to investigate how inhibitory control processing may differ among three groups: youth athletes who currently participate in non-contact sports ( n = 70; 13.2 ± 2.7 yr), youth athletes who currently participate in collision sports ( n = 48; 12.9 ± 2.6 yr), and current youth participants of non-sport activities ( n = 57; 14.3 ± 2.5 yr). Group differences on task-based behavioral measures (accuracy, reaction time) were assessed using generalized linear models. A whole-brain univariate functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis using a generalized linear model approach was conducted to identify task-related regional differences in the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent signal.

No group differences were observed in behavioral task performance ( P values above 0.242). However, there were differences in neural recruitment of the left Superior Temporal Gyrus region (Montreal Neurological Institute coordinates: -58, -40, 10; k = 102 voxels; peak voxel z -value = 4.24; P < 0.001, cluster-corrected) when comparing the two sport groups to the non-sport activity group-athletes activated this region more than non-sport peers during inhibited response trials.

Sport participation may influence differential processing during active response inhibition, perhaps signaling differences in task strategy; however, collision sport participation shows no distinct deleterious effect.