A team of researchers at the University of Victoria has developed a new tool to measure how repeated mild concussions affect adolescents and the role gender plays in head injuries.

The research showed that young males experience more acute symptoms of concussion while young women are more likely to experience long-term negative effects.

Brains are still developing until around age 25, making the group below this age most at risk for concussions.

Brian Christie, a neuroscientist and professor in the division of medical sciences at UVic, said the research takes an entirely new approach to modelling concussions.

"We have a model that actually has shown us that it's the brain's physical movement in the head that's causing the trauma, and the physical movement is from the centre of the brain," he said.

'Brain's physical movement' causes trauma

Much of the current research on concussions has focused on trauma to adult brains and has been studied using models that induce mild brain damage surgically or through anesthesia.

According to Christie, that method may skew results, which is why he has hope for the newly developed approach, called Awake Closed Head Injury (ACHI).

In the ACHI experiment, rats received controlled, repeated blows to their heads by a machine. The rats were outfitted with special plastic helmets and researchers were able to examine the effects with less delay than other methods.

"It's the brain's physical movement in the head that's causing the trauma... the centre of the brain that is moving around and stretching and pulling on connections in the brain," Christie told Jason D'Souza, host of CBC's All Points West.

The team then observed the rats through a series of physical and cognitive tests, including testing their balance and reaction times, which revealed a difference in the reactions of male and female rats.

Male rats tended to have more acute symptoms immediately following the head trauma while female rats tended to have fewer early symptoms but a longer recovery period.

The study concluded that the movements observed within the brain likely cause metabolic changes and changes in protein expression.

Hope for personalized testing

The differences between genders may indicate that hormones play some role in the way brain injuries are expressed, something Christie hopes will lead to more personalized testing and allow doctors to identify concussions using blood and/or saliva testing.

"Now we have a basic research tool in which we can start looking at changes in protein expression, how neurons are functioning and look at the role that repeated concussions play in changing brain chemistry," said Christie.

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