Cognition and post-concussive symptom status after pediatric mild traumatic brain injury

ABSTRACT

Cognitive impairment and post-concussive symptoms (PCS) represent hallmark sequelae of pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI). Few studies have directly compared cognition as a function of PCS status longitudinally. Cognitive outcomes were therefore compared for asymptomatic pmTBI, symptomatic pmTBI, and healthy controls (HC) during sub-acute (SA; 1–11 days) and early chronic (EC; approximately 4 months) post-injury phases. We predicted worse cognitive performance for both pmTBI groups relative to HC at the SA visit. At the EC visit, we predicted continued impairment from the symptomatic group, but no difference between asymptomatic pmTBI and HCs. A battery of clinical (semi-structured interviews and self-report questionnaires) and neuropsychological measures were administered to 203 pmTBI and 139 HC participants, with greater than 80% retention at the EC visit. A standardized change method classified pmTBI into binary categories of asymptomatic or symptomatic based on PCS scores. Symptomatic pmTBI performed significantly worse than HCs on processing speed, attention, and verbal memory at SA visit, whereas lower performance was only present for verbal memory for asymptomatic pmTBI. Lower performance in verbal memory persisted for both pmTBI groups at the EC visit. Surprisingly, a minority (16%) of pmTBI switched from asymptomatic to symptomatic status at the EC visit. Current findings suggest that PCS and cognition are more closely coupled during the first week of injury but become decoupled several months post-injury. Evidence of lower performance in verbal memory for both asymptomatic and symptomatic pmTBI suggests that cognitive recovery may be a process separate from the resolution of subjective symptomology.

KEYWORDS:

• Neuropsychological testing
• adolescent
• recovery
• head injury

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2023.2181946.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (https://www.nih.gov) to Andrew R. Mayer (grant numbers NIH 01 R01 NS098494-01A1, R01 NS098494-03S1A1, P30 GM122734, and S10 OD025313). The NIH had no role in study review, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.