Feeling Fine Does Not Mean Healed: What Neuroscience Says About Hidden Brain Recovery

                Most people think of concussions as a temporary thing. You get hit, you get dazed, you get a headache. After some time you are " well " again. But what if it is okay to feel okay and your brain isn’t all the way healed?

               I learned in a neuroscience lecture this semester that there are other ways to measure brain function other than just behavior or symptoms. For example, there’s frequency-following response (FFR), which is a measure of the brain’s ability to follow sound, particularly pitch. In the brainstem, this happens and it is important for speech understanding, especially in noisy environments.

               What I learned is that even when someone feels better after a concussion, their brain may not be hearing sound quite the same. Recovery may not be as straightforward as symptom checklists suggest.

               This is tied directly into an article I saw the other day on NPR about how many athletes are coming back to sports without the proper care or time to heal. The article notes concussion protocols are often based on self-reported symptoms and short cognitive tests. If someone can say that they feel fine, they are usually permitted to resume normal activities.

               But neuroscience indicates this might not be enough.

               If brain activity is still different after the symptoms are gone, people may be going back to school, sports or work before their brain is ready. This can impact things such as attention, learning and even comprehension of conversations, particularly in busy environments. These are not always obvious problems, but they may build up.

               That also raises bigger questions about how we define recovery. According to National Public Radio (2023), many athletes are returning to play without proper recovery. Currently, recovery is mostly based on how someone feels and how they do on simple tests. But if there are deeper processes happening in the brain we might miss some of the picture.

               Other, more objective measures such as neural responses may be used to improve concussion diagnosis and management. These tools have not yet been widely used and are less accessible and hence more complicated in real-world settings.

               Overall, this topic was eye opening to me that the brain does not always heal in ways that we can see easily. No symptoms do not mean it is back to normal. As neuroscience progresses, we may have to reconfigure what “recovered” really means.

 

References

National Public Radio. (2023, October 12). More athletes are suffering concussions. Few are getting            proper care. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/12/1205290475/concussions-athletes-treatment