Concussion acutely disrupts auditory processing in division I football student-athletes.
Jennifer Krizman, Danielle Colegrove, Jenna Cunningham and 4 others
PMID 39224977WHAT IT FOUND
Football players tested 24 to 72 hours after concussion had reduced brain responses to pitch and speech sounds compared with their own preseason baseline.
The drop covered both pitch and the features that distinguish speech sounds.
Key findings
01Acutely following concussion, football players showed a significant pervasive decline in auditory frequency encoding.
02The acute decline was broad rather than pitch-specific: time-by-frequency interactions were not significant.
03In the six athletes with a second concussion, frequency encoding declined again at the second injury.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 39 male Division I football players were tested, so the findings do not establish the same acute auditory changes in female athletes, other sports, or non-sport head injuries. There was no non-concussed control group, so the study cannot fully separate concussion effects from normal variation over the season. Testing was acute only, with no post-recovery measure, so it cannot show whether the auditory declines persist, resolve, or predict clinical recovery. Only 6 athletes had a second concussion, and correlations between the two injuries were mostly not significant because of the very small sample. The outcome was an electrophysiological response to a synthesized speech sound, not a functional communication test or patient-reported auditory symptom outcome.
Declared interests
The authors reported no potential conflicts of interest. The article's publication-type information lists NIH extramural research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that FFR testing is a validated clinical concussion test or that these acute auditory changes explain patient-reported symptoms. The study measured brain responses to a synthesized speech sound in 39 male football players at 24 to 72 hours after concussion, with no non-injured control group and no later recovery testing.