Abstract #2386

White matter microstructure in adolescent female soccer athletes: diffusion MRI relations with years of high-school experience, concussion history, and cognitive measurements.

Yukai Zou^1,2, Xianglun Mao³, Ikbeom Jang³, Nicole L. Vike², Thomas S. Redick⁴, Thomas M. Talavage^1,3, and Joseph V. Rispoli¹

¹Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States, ²College of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States, ³School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States, ⁴Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, United States

Understanding how contact sports activities potentially affect the brains and cognitive abilities of adolescent athletes in both short and long-term scales is critical. Using 3 Tesla diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and tract-based spatial statistics, this study investigated the white matter microstructure of 13 high-school female soccer athletes over one competition season. No significant difference of DWI metrics across the season was observed. However, regression analyses showed significant effects of years of high-school experience and concussion history on the DWI metrics within corticothalamic and limbic pathways, and the abnormal changes of DWI metrics may relate to cognitive impairments.

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