title: The acute effects of mild traumatic brain injury on finger tapping with and without word repetition.
abstract: This study aimed to investigate the acute effects of mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) on the performance of a finger tapping and word repetition dual task in order to determine working memory impairment in mTBI. Sixty-four (50 male, 14 female) right-handed cases of mTBI and 26 (18 male and 8 female) right-handed cases of orthopaedic injuries were tested within 24 hours of injury. Patients with mTBI completed fewer correct taps in 10 seconds than patients with orthopaedic injuries, and female mTBI cases repeated fewer words. The size of the dual task decrement did not vary between groups. When added to a test battery including the Rapid Screen of Concussion (RSC; Comerford, Geffen, May, Medland & Geffen, 2002) and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test, finger tapping speed accounted for 1% of between groups variance and did not improve classification rates of male participants. While the addition of tapping rate did not improve the sensitivity and specificity of the RSC and DSST to mTBI in males, univariate analysis of motor performance in females indicated that dual task performance might be diagnostic. An increase in female sample size is warranted. These results confirm the view that there is a generalized slowing of processing ability following mTBI.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory, University of Queensland, Herston, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. comerf@psy.uq.edu.au
authors.forename: Veronica Eileen
authors.initials: VE
authors.lastname: De Monte
authors.forename: Gina Malke
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Geffen
authors.forename: Christopher Randall
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: May
authors.forename: Ken
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McFarland
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Heath
authors.forename: Mendy
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Neralic
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000503:physiopathology*; D003710:Demography; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers / Q000294:innervation / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015600:Glasgow Coma Scale; D006226:Hand Deformities / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012737:Sex Factors; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D014936:Word Association Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data