Annually, over 2 million individuals in North America will suffer from mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or concussion to a cost of over $75 billion dollars in lost productivity (CDC). In Canada alone, 200,000 professional and amateur athletes, children and elderly, drivers and pedestrians, civilians and soldiers will suffer from mild brain trauma. An objective evaluation is required in terms of its capacity to distinguish concussed patients from healthy controls, and its ability to predict which individuals will develop chronic symptoms from data acquired in the acute stage.
A number of brain areas are particularly susceptible to mTBI, among these are the frontal lobes, portions of the corpus callosum, and the thalamus. These brain regions are made up of a number of structures that play key roles in oculomotor movement. It is therefore logical to expect that visual deficits would follow mTBI.
Sacccade Analytics’ Advanced Nystagmus System (ANSTM) offers a quantitative and automated solution to the analysis of eye and head coordination, and will be tested on concussed patients to uncover novel markers to assist in the localization of damaged neural centres. The results will be validated using functional and structural MRI protocol that is sensitive to mTBI/concussion.