Throughout the whole semester I had the overall pleasure to listen to Dr. Jennifer Kirzman speech on her research titled "Auditory biological marker of concussion in children", which centered around the impact concussion has on children's auditory skills, especially children from a sports medical clinic who had their concussions occur from a sports injury. This research highlights how concussions affect the auditory process in the Fundamental frequency (F0), and were ankle to explore if the concussion that children suffer affects the facilitation of pitch perception, identification of sound and talk, and the understanding of stress and prosody. This is what made me overall interested in the topic, since most of the time research around concussion in children focuses on brain-specific proteins as a biological marker. This research takes a different approach and focuses on the topic of auditory skills in order to diagnose children with concussions.
One of the main concepts highlighted by the research is the shift in using auditory biological markers to diagnose concussion. The use of this biological marker is supported by the concept of examining how especially concussions impact neural processing in children. In the article "Persistent post-concussion symptoms include neural auditory processing in young children" the researchers highlight how children affected by consciousness display a disruption in their ability for their brains to encode sound, especially in processing pitch and speech-related frequencies. These types of disruption occur at the neural level, which signify that when a child's hearing ability may seem normal, their brains ability to accurately interpret the auditory information that is received is abnormal. This allows for the understanding of why children continue to struggle to follow conversations or understand speech in a loud environment even after they appear normal, or when a standard hearing test shows no worries. Significantly, these types of changes can be consistent even after external symptoms amplify, proposing that auditory processing provides a more sensitive and unbiased measure of brain injury (concussions).
Similarly, in the study titled "Long-term effects of mild traumatic brain injury in pediatrics", the research highlights how despite the fact that multiple children appear to recover within a short time a considerable number of children experience a continuous cognitive problem. This problem can include attention, learning, and memory. Significantly, these lasting effects are closely linked with systems that depend heavily on auditory processing. This connects to the aspect and setting that are important for children, classroom setting where students need the constant ability to interpret spoken languages and verbal instructions, all while filtering out background noises. If concussions disrupt the children's ability on how the brain processes sound, it can also disrupt children's ability to learn and retain academically. One example, a child's difficulty in encoding verbal lessons may make it hard for them to keep up with the teacher, even if they seem extremely fine.
Together these research suggest that brain injury (such as concussions) cannot be completely understood only through visible symptoms or the traditional biological markers alone. Instead the use of examining long term effect and neural sound encoding, can show the use of auditory biomarkers as a shift to a more effective interpretation of concussion diagnosis and recovery.
References
Bonacina, Silvia, et al. “Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms Include Neural Auditory Processing in Young Children.” PubMed, vol. 9, no. 1, 1 Mar. 2024, pp. CNC114–CNC114, pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11270634/, https://doi.org/10.2217/cnc-2023-0013.
Kraus, Nina, et al. “Auditory Biological Marker of Concussion in Children.” Scientific Reports, vol. 6, no. 1, Dec. 2016, www.nature.com/articles/srep39009, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39009. Accessed 5 Dec. 2019.Tumarisi Tuersunjiang, et al. “Long-Term Effects of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in Pediatrics.” Acta Psychologica, vol. 258, 15 July 2025, pp. 105260–105260, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.105260.
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