The objective of this proposal is to disseminate mouthguard sensors to a community of researchers studying the short- and long-term effects of head impacts on brain health. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has long been known to be a leading cause of death and disability among children and young adults. However, it has only recently been argued that concussion, a form of ?mild? TBI, increases the risk for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. Understanding the mechanisms of concussion is crucial for injury diagnosis and prevention. However, past research efforts have been unable to identify a clear link between head impact acceleration dose and neurological response indicative of injury. This is mainly due to the lack of a large, high quality concussion dataset. The difficulty in measuring rare injury scenarios has hampered individual investigators from making substantial progress. Thus the required dataset can only be gathered through large- scale, multi-institution dissemination of a validated head impact measurement sensor. We propose to widely disseminate our rigorously validated Stanford mouthguard (MiG2.0), and subsequently develop a platform to share collected data among many investigators. The MiG2.0 is a unique design that rigidly couples to the skull through upper dentition. This project will disseminate the MiG2.0 to a large community of concussion researchers that study high injury rate populations such as contact sports players. At the end of the project, we will have a large concussion database with accurate head impact measurements that will further our understanding of concussion mechanisms. Our long-term goal is that the knowledge gained from this dissemination effort will improve concussion management and long-term brain health by enabling (1) real-time field diagnosis, and (2) design improvements in protective equipment for athletics, the military, transportation and other high-risk activities.
The objective of this proposal is to disseminate mouthguard sensors to a community of researchers studying the short- and long-term effects of head impacts on brain health. The data collected from this dissemination will be aggregated into a large concussion database with accurate head impact measurements. The knowledge gained from this dissemination effort will help improve concussion management and long-term brain health by enabling (1) real-time field diagnosis, and (2) design improvements in protective equipment for athletics, the military, transportation and other high-risk activities.
