High-tech mouthguards are being worn by male and female ice hockey players to better understand the impact of concussion on both sexes.
The UBC Thunderbirds hockey teams are part of a five-year collaborative study with the University of British Columbia, and are now using the mouthguards to gain insight into brain changes and impacts in men and women.
The inclusion of women in the study is helping to shed new light on the impact of concussion; while research suggests women are more likely to sustain concussion than men, the majority of studies have involved male participants.
“There’s been not enough research on female athletes who’ve suffered a sport-related concussion, and so looking at and comparing to male athletes will potentially provide some insight into the sex differences that occur,” says co-principal investigator Dr Paul van Donkelaar, a professor in the school of health and exercise sciences at UBC’s Okanagan campus.
“This research will also help us provide some guidance in terms of allowing both male and female players to play hockey as safely as possible.”
The study is led by Dr Lyndia Wu, a brain injury biomechanics expert who helped develop a mouthguard with motion sensors in her PhD at Stanford University, which was later used to study concussions in US college and youth football.
The new research will build on the work being done in the UK with sensor mouthguards, which are in use in rugby and in trials in top-level football.
“We started a five-year collaborative study with the UBC Thunderbirds men’s and women’s hockey teams with two main research goals: to understand how the brain changes after a concussion in sports and how repeated impacts may lead to longer term brain changes,” says Dr Wu.
She says the mouthguard is an ideal tool to study these head impacts as it sits closer to the skull than other types of sensors like helmet sensors, making it capable of capturing data such as the speed and direction of the impact and the strength of the blow.
“Concussions are a part of the game of hockey, because it’s such a fast sport,” says Graham Thomas, Thunderbirds hockey women’s team head coach.
“There’s just so much that can happen. We’re doing this [research] for the bigger picture and for the benefit of those who come after us.”
In addition to wearing the mouthguards on the ice, the players are given pre- and post-season assessments to track changes in their brain health over time. These tests include MRIs, eye tracking tests, balance tests and cognitive function tests.
“We’re looking at the effects of accumulated head impacts on neurological function so we’re looking at their memory, their moods, their focus, how it affects their balance and also vision,” said study lead Dr Adam Clansey, a research associate in mechanical engineering in the faculty of applied science.
The researchers are assessing the impact of severe concussive hits as well as more minor blows to the head.
“Severe hits to the head are what most people are aware of, but even milder hits may have significant effects if they happen multiple times over the years,” says study co-principal investigator Dr Alexander Rauscher, an associate professor in the department of paediatrics and the Canada Research Chair in Quantitative MRI.
“Ultimately, we hope to learn how long it takes the brain to recover from a concussion,” says Dr Rauscher.
“With this information we can let athletes know that they should take a break after they’ve had a certain number of hits, so that they do not risk ending up with long-term negative effects,” says Dr Rauscher.
The study highlights the value of collaboration across different disciplines, adds Dr Wu.
“Concussion research really needs researchers, players and coaches to work closely together and come up with solutions that will benefit future generations of athletes,” she says.
