Mild Head Injury can Impact Brain Health and Thinking Skills: Study

A mild head injury has the potential of damaging the brain and causing cognitive decline and memory loss in patients, warns a study.

Traumatic brain injuries resulting from forceful motion of head or drastic change in mental status are classified as 'mild' if conditions like loss of consciousness, confusion and disorientation last for less than 30 minutes. British researchers from the Newcastle University in the U.K. found individuals who have sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBI) have elevated risk of developing problems related to poor brain functioning, loss of thinking skills, memory retention, attention span and mood fluctuations.

They compared the brain health of 44 people who had mild TBI with 33 other participants without any head injuries. The subjects underwent diffusion tensor imagining scan, a type of MRI scan that is more accurate than traditional brain imaging tests in identifying damaged cells and fiber tracts inside the brain almost six days after injury. All participants took tests to measure thinking and memory skills during the research and a year later.

The nerve axons in brain white matter and regions that allowed cell connectivity of People with TBI had notable impairment. These individuals secured 25 percent lower scores in verbal letter fluency tasks and thinking and memory tests due to massive white matter damage.

"Most of the studies thus far have focused on people with severe and chronic traumatic brain injury," said Andrew Blamire, study author and researcher at the Newcastle University, in a press release.

 "We studied patients who had suffered clinically mild injuries often from common accidents such as falling from a bicycle, or slow speed car accidents. This finding is especially important, as 90 percent of all traumatic brain injuries are mild to moderate," he adds.

The authors also noticed the damage in brain regions of those with TBI persisted even after a year and found no changes in their performance in memory and thinking tests.

"These results show that thinking skills were recovering over time. The areas of brain damage were not as widespread across the brain as previously, but focused in certain areas of the brain, which could indicate that the brain was compensating for the injuries," Blamire said.

The research was supported by the Sir Jules Thorn Charitable Trust. More information is available online in the journal Neurology.