Sound Processing May be Biomarker for Concussion
New research suggests that sound maybe a useful biomarker for diagnosing concussions in children.
Researchers at Northwestern University, lead by Nina Kraus with the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, recruited 20 children from a sports medicine clinic diagnosed with concussions, and 20 children in the community with no reported brain injury in order to test the efficacy of speech-evoked frequency-following responses (FFRs) in diagnosing children with concussions.
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Their findings showed that children who sustained concussions had smaller responses than their peers in the control group, but both groups had similar harmonic processing. Children with concussions had poorer pitch coding, had smaller responses to speech, and slower response time than their peers. Likewise, children with concussions had a less accurate neural coding of speech sound.
In addition, researchers performed a receiver operating characteristic analysis to determine if FFRs was accurate in diagnosing concussions in children. The results showed that FFRs achieved a sensitivity score of 90%, and a specificity score of 95%. FFRs had a 94.7% positivity predicative value, and 90.4% negative predicative value.
Overall, their study suggests that FFRs may be effective at diagnosing concussions in children, and a useful tool for concussion management.
—Melissa Weiss
Reference:
Kraus N, Thompson EC, Krizman J, Cook K, White-Schwoch T, LaBella CR. Auditory biological marker of concussion in children [published online December 22, 2016]. Scientific Reports. doi:10.1038/srep39009.