• Stephanie E Barlow, Paolo Medrano, Daniel R Seichepine, and Robert S Ross.
• Psychology Department, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire.
• Eur. J. Neurosci. 2018 Dec 1; 48 (12): 3498-3513.

AbstractMild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) can cause persistent cognitive changes. These cognitive changes may be due to changes in neural communication. Task-switching is a cognitive control operation that may be susceptible to mTBI and is associated with oscillations in theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (8-13 Hz), and beta (14-30 Hz) ranges. This study aimed to investigate oscillatory power in response to cues indicating a task-switch after mTBI. Electroencephalogram and behavioral data were collected from 21 participants with a history of two or more concussions (mTBI) and 21 age- and gender-matched controls as they performed a task-switching paradigm. Participants differentiated whether visual stimuli were red or green, or circles or squares, depending on a cue. The cue changed every few trials with the first trial after a rule change being termed a switch trial. The mTBI group showed significantly less overall accuracy during the task. Over a posterior parietal region, the mTBI group showed more theta desynchronization than the control group from ~300 to ~600 ms post-cue during switch trials and from ~300 to 400 ms during maintain trials, along with less alpha and beta desynchronization than the control group from ~2,000 to ~2,200 ms post-cue. In a right parietal region, the mTBI group showed less alpha and beta desynchronization from ~525 to ~775 ms post-cue. However, there was no condition × group interaction in the behavior or oscillatory results. These oscillatory differences suggest a change in neural communication is present after mTBI that may relate to global changes in task performance.© 2018 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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