title: Examination of postconcussion-like symptoms in healthy university students: relationships to subjective and objective neuropsychological function performance.
abstract: This study examined postconcussion-like symptoms in a group of university students and explored their relationships to neuropsychological function performance. A sample of 124 students was recruited. All of the participants received the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) and completed a comprehensive set of neuropsychological tests. They reported a relatively high base rate of postconcussion-like symptoms. The most frequently endorsed items were "fatigue" (76.9%), "longer time to think" (60.3%), "poor concentration" (58.7%), "sleep disturbance" (50.4%), and "frustration" (46.3%). There were no significant differences between low symptom reporters and high symptom reporters, except for self-reported dysexecutive problems. A comparison of the healthy high symptom reporters and a convenient sample of traumatic brain injury patients revealed that the patients performed significantly worse on neuropsychological functions than the high symptom reporters, despite non-significant differences between symptom endorsement. Our findings demonstrate that: (a) the base rate of postconcussion-like symptoms in a group of healthy university students is relatively high and (b) postconcussion symptom (PCS) is not related to neuropsychological functions in normal people.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
authors.forename: Ya
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Raymond C K
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Yongyu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Deng
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010808:Physical Examination; D038223:Post-Concussion Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012196:Review Literature as Topic; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014495:Universities